


Words on a Page

by Chemicallywrit



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Gen, also the major character deaths are canon compliant too so, blupjeans (incidental), but other than that no romantic shipping, i just really love davenport okay, just the power of friendship for good and ill, well moderately happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-01-21 00:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12445581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chemicallywrit/pseuds/Chemicallywrit
Summary: A biography told through flashbacks and the written word. A friendship that lasted over a hundred years. A story worth telling.





	1. Biography Interview (Subject: Davenport; Session 1)

“I don’t quite understand the point of this,” said Davenport, hopping up onto the chair. They were in a little-used office on the top floor of the Institute’s administrative building, a stuffy, ancient room where the dustiest and least-used reference books came to die. The young dark-skinned human across from him had two journals open on the table in front of her, two quills poised and ready above twin inkwells.

“The Institute wants biographies of their top scientists for their archives,” she said. “Director Auchenloss insisted on it.”

“They’re really serious about this possible shut-down, aren’t they?” Davenport grumbled.

“I can’t speak to that,” she said. “But I am of the opinion, and the Director agrees, that your stories are stories worth telling.”

Davenport shrugged. “I don’t know that I’ve done anything noteworthy as of yet. We have a lot of goals unfulfilled. Even more if they take our funding.”

“I find it hard to believe that the most senior engineer at IPRE hasn’t done anything noteworthy,” said the human. 

“I’m not the most senior engineer,” he corrected her. “Streph Darkmantle and I both are.”

“My apologies.” She jotted something down. “At any rate, my name is Lucretia. I have a few questions in mind, but we can talk about whatever you like.”

Davenport raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t happen to write a history of the centaur rebellion.”

A flicker of a smile passed over her face. “I did.”

“I thought so.” Davenport leaned forward. “The book had me on the edge of my seat. And it’s not as though I didn’t know how it would end, either.”

Lucretia looked demurely at her lap. “You are too kind.”

“Not at all. It was excellent.” Davenport settled back in his seat. At least if someone was to be writing about him, it would be someone who could really write. 

“Well. Thank you.” She cleared her throat. “Shall we begin?”

“I suppose so.”

Lucretia looked down at her journals and began to write in both, with both hands. “You were born not far from here, right?”

“Just outside the city,” he said, mesmerized by the movement of her quills. Truly extraordinary.

“Your parents?”

“Arthur and Amelia were their names,” he said. “Both gone now.”

“Surnames? You don’t seem to have—”

“No, not us.” Davenport shifted in his chair. “They’re not so important to gnomes. My family hasn’t had one for generations.”

“Right.” She flipped a page on one journal forward with one hand, and started sketching something in the other. “And I’ve read a bit about you. Your parents weren’t married, is that correct?”

“They weren’t, no.” 

“But both in your life?”

Davenport frowned. “It’s not like you think it is.”

Lucretia paused. He could see she’d drawn a sketch of his face, mostly mustache, which was admittedly accurate. “I beg your pardon. It’s not my place to make assumptions.”

“You’re coming at this from a rather human perspective,” said Davenport, more sharply than he meant to.

“My apologies.” Lucretia flipped to a new page on both journals. “Would you like to explain, so I understand better? Or we could talk about other matters.”

Davenport folded his hands carefully on the table, considering. 

“I am sorry, really,” she added, and this time her tone was genuinely contrite. She really was young, wasn’t she?

Gods, when was the last time anyone had asked him anything thing about how he grew up?

“It’s only that there isn’t a good word for it in Common,” he said. “What my parents were to each other.”

“No?” Lucretia began writing.

“No.” Davenport relaxed his hands, let them unlink themselves. He waved one in the air. “They were…friends?”

“Friends who raised a child together?” said Lucretia, but she wasn’t judgmental, she was curious. 

“Good enough friends that they could,” said Davenport, feeling a little relieved. “More than friends. But not really romantic.”

“Is such an arrangement common among gnomes?” she asked.

“More common than among other folk, I think.”

“I see.” She nodded. “Would you like to talk about your childhood?”

“There’s not a lot to tell,” he said. “It was happy. Normal. My parents were both tinkers and inventors. They liked clockwork and gadgets.” Davenport leaned back in his chair, smiling at the memories. “My first toys were gears.”

Lucretia smiled too, her hands still moving across the parchment. “You were interested in engineering from a young age, then?”

“I would say so, yes, and they helped it along. Up to a point, anyway.”

“What was that point?” asked Lucretia.

Davenport’s smile faded. “It was when I was about nine.”

* * *

“You ready, Davvy?”

Davenport carefully straddled the new invention, something Uncle Gregor called the Float Chair, which was more or less a bicycle seat on a complicated, blocky machine. It was sitting in an open space in his uncle’s scrapyard, a ways from the little shack that was his home, where Davenport and his mother had been staying the last few weeks. 

Davenport gave his uncle a gap-toothed smile and a lopsided salute. “Aye aye, sir!”

“All right!” Uncle Gregor raised the remote control in his hands, extended the giant radio antenna, and paused. “No, now something’s missing.”

“What?”

Gregor scratched his head. “Hmm…oh, I know!” He snatched the pair of goggles off his forehead, placed them carefully onto Davenport’s head, and tightened the strap. “There you go. Now you’re a real pilot.”

Davenport’s eyes went wide. “Golly.”

“All right, here we go.” Uncle Gregor brandished the remote control and twisted the knobs.

The blocky machine roared to life, wobbled and, inexplicably, rose. Davenport’s face lit up. “It’s working!”

“It sure is!” There was a wild light in Uncle Gregor’s eyes. “Now we’re gonna try something a little crazy. Ready?”

“Yeah!” Davenport paused. “Uh, Uncle Gray?”

“Hmm?” Uncle Gregor frowned at the controller, flipping a couple of switches.

“How do I—”

Gregor punched a button.

“—hold ooooOOOOOOONNN—”

The float chair rocketed into the air and spiraled into a pile of old mattresses with a terrific CRASH.

“Oh! Something to hold onto!” said Gregor. “Of course! How did I—” He paused. “Davvy? You okay?”

Davenport surfaced from the wreckage, goggles askew, and held up a thumb. “Yep! That was awesome!”

“Gray!”

Gregor cringed as Davenport’s mother hurried toward them from his shack. “Hi, Mel.”

Amelia threw a hand out toward Davenport. “What the hell is this?”

“Your son?” Gregor attempted.

“Mom, mom, Uncle Gray made a flying machine!” Davenport untangled himself from the float chair and scurried over. “It’s got no magic in it at all!”

“Did he now?” hissed Amelia.

“I’m telling you, the future is in mechanical contraptions!” Gregor insisted.

Amelia’s mouth was a hard line. She gestured for her brother to lean closer. He obliged her.

“Can you try your very hardest not to endanger my son anymore?” Her tone was level, but there was murder in her eyes.

“The boy should have some fun,” Gregor insisted. He glanced at Davenport, who was adjusting the goggles on his face, and lowered his voice. “Especially in light of what happened to Arty.”

“Did you ever think that it’s because of what happened to Arty that I don’t want him doing anything dangerous?” Amelia snapped.

Gregor paused. “I hadn’t—I actually hadn’t considered that.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you should.” Amelia sighed and massaged the bridge of her nose. “Please. Just…don’t. For my sake.”

Gregor spread his arms for a hug. “All right.”

Amelia sighed and hugged her brother. 

“Mom?”

Amelia pulled away and ruffled Davenport’s hair. “Yes, my boy?”

“How long do we get to stay with Uncle Gray?” Davenport had the goggles back on. They made his eyes look enormous.

Amelia sighed. “I don’t know yet. We’ll see. But it’ll be a while.”

“Good.” Davenport grinned. “I like it here.”

“Well that’s good news.” Amelia smiled. “Here, why don’t you help your uncle clean up, and then we’ll all have dinner?”

“Let’s roll this thing into the garage, huh?” said Uncle Gregor, pointing at his wrecked float chair.

“Okay,” said Davenport, and hurried off toward it.

Amelia shot one last warning glance at Gregor before heading back to the shack. Gregor swallowed, and then joined Davenport in shoving the chair on its near-useless wheels through the piles of salvage.

“That was a good prototype,” said Davenport as they pushed the chair.

“I’ve certainly had worse first tests,” Gregor agreed. “Next time, though, we’ll have to find something else to represent the weight on there. Don’t want you getting hurt.”

“I’m not afraid,” Davenport insisted.

“Yeah, well. Don’t want to upset your mom.”

“But how am I gonna learn how to fly to the stars if she won’t let me fly?”

Gregor glanced down at his nephew, smiling a little. “You want to fly to the stars?”

“Yes,” said Davenport, with all the gravity a nine-year-old could muster.

“Well I’d better get busy inventing, then, huh?” Gregor said, just as solemnly. “Get the door, Davvy, won’t you?”

They’d reached the garage. Davenport hurried forward and turned the crank that pulled up the garage door. Gregor rolled the chair inside, brushed off his hands, and then shooed Davenport away from the crank. “I’ll close it, it’s tricky.”

“Okay.” Davenport watched the door close on the float chair and all Gregor’s other inventions-in-progress. “Uncle Gray, why don’t you want to use magic on your inventions?”

“Because magic is unpredictable, subjective, and inaccessible to folks who can’t use it,” said Gregor. He brushed his hands off again and headed back toward his shack, Davenport close behind. “I mean sure, you can enchant an object, but the cost of that? It’s ridiculous. No, better to speak the languages the universe was written in.”

“What are those?” Davenport asked, wide-eyed.

“Mathematics, Davvy, and physics!” Gregor grinned. “I tell you, kiddo, you understand those, the entire material plane is yours for the taking.”

“Even the stars?” demanded Davenport.

“Even the stars,” said Gregor. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the first person to leave the pull of gravity!”

Davenport set his face in determination. “I’m gonna be.”

“That’s the spirit, dream big!” Gregor ruffled his hair. “Imagine that, the first person to blast off into the atmosphere, a gnome.”

Davenport grinned.

* * *

“Uncle Gray says he’s almost got the balance of it right,” said Davenport, scrubbing the grease off a plate. “And we’ve got to add some handles, maybe, and then could I please ride the float chair again?”

“Only your uncle would think of adding safety precautions last,” grumbled Amelia, sitting at the table with the pieces of a watch spread out in front of her. She cleaned the last tiny gear with a little swab. “I don’t like you doing that.”

“But Mooom, I gotta learn to be a pilot!” Davenport dunked the plate in the rinse-basin and set it on top of the stack on the counter. 

“You’re not a pilot if you can’t control the vehicle, you’re a crash test dummy.” Amelia started piecing the watch back together, faster than should be possible.

“You think I could fly the float chair?” Davenport paused mid-scrub, marveling at the thought.

“I think no one should fly the float chair, because it’s a piece of junk.”

Davenport looked over his shoulder at his mom. “But it works!”

“It’s had six crash landings since we came to stay with Uncle Gray, and one of those was when it was safely locked up in the garage.” The watch was put together now. She set to winding it. “It works pretty well as a distraction, but not as a vehicle.”

“We just gotta make it better,” Davenport insisted. “Dad always says that real science is trying again.”

“Said,” she corrected him, and shook the watch. “C’mon. Work.”

Davenport’s heart sank. He scrubbed the dish again, in silence.

“Ugh!” She let the watch slip from her hand and clunk to the table top. “Stupid thing.”

He washed a few more dishes in silence and then glanced back to look at his mother. She had her head buried in her hands, the watch facedown in front of her on the table.

Davenport rinsed off his hands in the basin and dried them on his trousers, trying not to think about his dad, which worked for exactly thirty seconds before he burst into tears.

His mom looked up in alarm. “Wh-what’s…oh.” She shook her head. “My gods, I’m so sorry, Davvy, really I am. I don’t know what I was thinking. Come here.”

Davenport ran to his mother’s arms and buried his face in her shoulder, weeping. She pulled him up into her lap and stroked his head, rocking him gently.

“I miss him,” gasped Davenport.

“I miss him too,” Amelia said, her own voice thick with tears.

“It doesn’t make any sense!” Davenport leaned back to look at his mom. “Why did he die?”

Amelia shook her head. “That’s the most unsatisfying part, isn’t it? That it doesn’t make any sense.”

“I want him back,” Davenport moaned.

“Me too, Davvy.” Amelia kissed his forehead and leaned back to look at him. “Oh, my boy. My sweet boy. Can you…can you promise me something?”

Davenport looked at his mother, trying to get ahold of his shuddering breathing.

“Can you promise you won’t take any risks?” She cupped his head in her hands. “Please don’t put yourself in danger anymore. I can’t lose you like I lost your father.”

Davenport swallowed. This felt important. His first impulse was to think about it, consider every aspect, but the pleading in his mother’s eyes cut this short.

“I promise.”

* * *

“An accident?” Lucretia said.

“It shouldn’t have happened.” Davenport folded his hands again, to keep them from fluttering away.

“Many people are injured by farm equipment every year,” said Lucretia, as if reciting.

“Not many are inventors,” said Davenport. “Not many are killed.”

“It was a thresher of his own design, then?” asked Lucretia.

“Yes, intended to make the separation of grain and stalk more efficient.”

Lucretia pulled a face. “He didn’t—he didn’t fall in—”

“Thank the gods, no. It ran him over.” Davenport felt that old familiar ache, like the texture of a long-healed scar. “The engine was a mechanical-magical hybrid. They’re common now, but back then they were all rather new. This one was hard to control.”

“I see.” Lucretia bent down over her books again. “And so your mother swore you off danger to prevent another such accident from happening.”

“Yes.”

“How does one swear off risk and still become one of the greatest engineers of the era?”

“That’s a bit of a long story,” said Davenport, checking his father’s watch in his waistcoat pocket. “And I believe our time is up for today.”

“Ah, so it is.” Lucretia put down her quills and wiped the excess ink off her hands with a handkerchief. “Same time next week?”

“I suppose so,” he said, standing on the chair and offering a hand. 

She shook it. “Thank you, sir.”


	2. Biography Interview (Subject: Davenport; Session 2)

Davenport settled back into the chair. The office was a little less stuffy today; it looked like Lucretia had opened a tiny, dust-covered window beside one of the decrepit bookcases, and a whiff of spring air was creeping through. “Good afternoon.”

“Afternoon, sir.” Lucretia turned to two new pages in her journals, where there were a few things already written in bullet points. “I was going to ask you about how you came to be an engineer for IPRE today, but I had a couple of unrelated questions first, if you don’t mind me asking them.”

“Not at all,” said Davenport. “We’ll see if I mind answering them.”

Lucretia glanced up to see if he was joking, and returned his smile when she saw he was. “Right. It’s about nicknames. I have been reading about gnome cultures and I’ve found that nicknames seem to be important in most gnome groups, but I’ve never heard anyone call you anything other than Davenport.”

“Ah.” Davenport nodded. “I see the confusion. Most gnomes do like nicknames. Most people do, I find, but gnomes give them special significance.”

“So you don’t have nicknames because you’ve been living mostly among non-gnomes?”

“That’s part of it, yes,” said Davenport. “Some of it is deliberate, though.”

“Why is that?”

* * *

“Uncle Gray, Uncle Gray, can I come?”

Davenport ran alongside the ugly, bulky wagon loaded down with scrap. Gregor glanced down from the driver’s seat and smiled, and pulled on the reigns of the old mule hitched to the wagon. “Woah, Jammy. All right, then, climb on up.”

Davenport scrambled up the rope ladder and the steps to the driver’s seat and settled down beside his uncle. “Thanks! I was bored.”

“Are you bored, or are you avoiding chores?” asked Uncle Gregor, nudging the mule back into motion.

Davenport looked away and whistled nonchalantly.

“Aha, I see,” laughed Gregor. “All right, we’ll just tell your mom I needed the help.”

“Thanks, Uncle Gray.” Davenport grinned. “You’re a pal.”

“Probably too much of a pal,” said Gregor, and then mussed Davenport’s hair. “Ah, but what are uncles for?”

Davenport winced and snickered. “Where are we going, Uncle Gray?”

“We’re dropping off a load of scrap at Miss Kraggendorf’s refinery.” He steered Jammy through the open gates of the scrapyard and down the road to town.

“Uncle Gray, why do you keep this here?” Davenport leaned forward to touch the unused engine monstrosity that sat between Jammy and the driver’s seat, the one that Gregor claimed would be The Future of Horseless Transportation. “It doesn’t work.”

“It will someday.”

“Mom said it’s the first thing you ever built.” He ran his hand along one of the pipes, which was cold and slick with black grease.

“Sure was.”

“And it hasn’t worked once?”

“Still got some kinks to resolve, but mark me, it will work.”

Davenport leaned back in his seat, thinking hard. “But engines that use magic already work.”

“For a given value of work,” said Gregor carefully.

Davenport drew a clumsy sketch of the engine in the grease on his palm, adding details with his fingernail as they made their way down the road through the woods.

“Like this?” he said after a few minutes.

Gregor squinted at his nephew’s palm. “Not bad. Not bad at all. Missing some of the mechanics, but that’s the general idea.”

Davenport looked at the schematic carefully. “It ought to work. How come it doesn’t?”

“A mystery that has plagued me for many years, Davvy.”

“Is it the same reason dad’s watch doesn’t work?” Davenport smudged the schematic out. “Mom’s cleaned it and checked all the parts and it should work, but it doesn’t.” 

“Could be.” Gregor gave the reigns a little jostle. “I must say, I don’t like a mystery.”

“Did they stop speaking the language?” 

“What language?”

Davenport puffed out his chest and mimicked his uncle’s voice. “Mathematics, Davvy, and physics!”

Gregor laughed. “Usually things don’t, but you never know.”

“Maybe if we talk to them in the language, they’ll learn it again,” said Davenport.

“That’s all an inventor tries to do, lad,” said Gregor thoughtfully. “How shockingly insightful of you.”

“Thank you,” said Davenport, and drew a better engine design onto his hand.

They rumbled into town and turned up the hill toward the refinery, in silence for a while, Davenport doodling on his palm and kicking his legs under the seat.

“Now listen, Davvy.” Gregor waited until Davenport was looking at him. “When we get to Miss Kraggendorf’s refinery, I’d like you to refer to me as Uncle Gregor.”

“Why?” asked Davenport.

“That’s the name printed on the wagon,” he said. “And most folk don’t think of nicknames like we do.”

Davenport frowned. “Why?”

“Hmm. Good question.” Gregor considered this. “Why do you call someone a nickname?”

“Because you love them,” Davenport answered promptly, kicking his legs again. This was an extraordinarily easy question.

“Other folk do not. They consider nicknames to be funny, or frivolous.”

“Sometimes our nicknames are funny,” Davenport offered.

“But never frivolous, Davvy. And other folk give you nicknames as often to belittle or make fun of you as to show they love you.” Gregor pulled the mule to a stop in front of a loud raucous building, which must be the refinery. “Now you and I know that we are exactly the perfect size, but the bigger folk look down on us. Literally and figuratively.” Gregor shifted in his seat to look at his nephew. “You’ll get a lot of nicknames in your life. Make sure they’re the ones you want, all right?”

Davenport considered this carefully. “Then I should be Davenport.”

Gregor winked. “There we go. We’ll be in disguise. Hop down, Davimportant.”

Davenport grinned and scrambled down from the driver’s seat. A large orc woman was coming out of the refinery, taking off a pair of thick leather gloves. “Janie!” she shouted over her shoulder. “Come help unload!”

“Afternoon, Ellory,” called Gregor on the other side of the wagon.

“Hello, Gregor,” she called, coming out to meet them. Davenport stood beside his uncle and tried to look very professional. An orc girl poked her head out of the door after Ellory and hurried out to stand beside her. She smiled and waved to Davenport, who waved back.

“I’ve got one load of scrap for you, all the best steel, and there’s a case of aluminum back there for you too.” Gregor pulled a notepad out of his pocket and scribbled something down with a scrap of pencil, then handed them off to Ellory. “If you’d sign here, please.”

“Sure.” She bent down to take the notebook and wrote her signature carefully. “Who’s little man, then?”

“This is my nephew, Davenport,” said Gregor, adjusting the goggles on his head and throwing his nephew another wink.

“Is he?” Ellory handed the notebook back. “Well well, Davenport, this is my daughter Janie.”

“Hello!” said Janie, grinning. Davenport smiled at her.

Ellory bent down to look Davenport in the eye. “Going to be a scrapman like your uncle?” 

“No ma’am,” said Davenport solemnly. “I want to fly to the stars.”

Ellory threw back her head and laughed, standing back up. “He wants to fly to the stars! Fancy that. Shall we call you Starman?”

Davenport scowled. Frivolous indeed. He stood up a little straighter. “No thank you, ma’am. It’s Davenport, please.”

“Very well, very well.” Ellory was still laughing. “Let’s unload this, eh, Gregor?”

* * *

“Then it’s a matter of being taken seriously?” asked Lucretia.

“Exactly so.”

“Surely no one would dare think anything of you but the best, sir,” she said, glancing up at her writing. “I’ve heard nothing but good reports.”

Of course she had. He’d ensured that. Davenport flexed his jaw. “How many gnomes are there in the upper ranks of IPRE?”

Lucretia paused, both quills hovering over the paper. “Just you, I suppose.”

“Everyone knows gnomes are good tinkerers, good mechanics, good inventors,” said Davenport, as evenly as he could manage. “But who actually trusts them with authority, respects them enough to listen? Very few indeed.”

“They respect you,” said Lucretia.

“And I’ve worked very hard to get it that way,” said Davenport, sitting needle-straight on his chair. Anything for a little extra height. “Harder than most.”

Lucretia nodded. “I want to know more about that, especially about your days in the Institute’s Academy, but not today, I think.”

“Very well,” said Davenport. He wasn’t certain he wanted to talk about his school days right now anyway. 

“I’d like to talk about that promise you made to your mother.” She drew a line across the pages of both journals. “How did that affect your early forays into engineering?”

“Ah, well, the engineering wasn’t a problem.” Davenport relaxed a little. “It was everything else.”

“What do you mean?” Lucretia asked.

Davenport thought about this for a moment. “May I use a piece of paper?”

Lucretia flipped one of her journals to its last page, tore it out, and handed it over. Davenport nodded his thanks and dug a stub of pencil out of his pocket. What to do…ah, yes. His pencil scratched against the parchment. “Engineering should be hands-on, but if you have the knack for it, then you can make it so that it’s just…here.” He showed her the schematic, a detailed, immaculately labeled diagram of a trebuchet. “Words on a page, see?”

“And who can be hurt by words on a page?” said Lucretia thoughtfully, looking over the schematic carefully. “I see. Um, may I keep this?”

“Sure,” said Davenport, stuffing the pencil back in his pocket. “Designing things wasn’t the issue, it was testing them that my mother didn’t like.”

“What sort of things did you design?” asked Lucretia, placing the schematic carefully in the fold of one journal and taking up her quills again.

* * *

“I don’t know, Davenport, the sails just look wrong.” Thwockmorton, the human boy from up the road, screwed up his face. “How come they’re all triangles?”

The four children were on the beach of the lake by Janie’s house. Janie had immediately decided that Davenport should be their friend, and Davenport soon learned that being Janie’s friend meant they were always busy trying something new. This time had been Davenport’s turn to suggest a project, and they’d been working on it all month, but now their boat was finally finished.

“It’s a cutter,” said Davenport, yanking the rope to hang the last sail. “They’re supposed to be triangles.”

“Yeah, but aren’t they supposed to be right triangles?” Ari squinted through her dirty glasses, hooked on her long pointed ears. “Those all look sideways.”

“Yeah, ‘cuz it’s a cutter,” said Davenport, hopping down from beached little ship into the sand. “I saw it in a book.”

“It is a pretty boat, Thwock,” said Janie, grinning. “Worth the time building it, don’t you think?”

“Nobody said it was gonna be lopsided,” grumbled Thwock.

“Why did you think the rigging was shaped like this?” asked Davenport.

“I did wonder,” said Ari thoughtfully. “Is it ready to go?”

“Yep.” Davenport looked at the little boat—ship, he thought privately—with the eye of a proud parent. “The tiller even works. It takes two to sail it, I think. Someone at the tiller and someone to do the sails. Maybe you could do it by yourself if you practiced a lot.”

“You built us a ship!” crowed Janie. “I can’t believe it!”

“Technically we all built it,” said Ari. 

“We couldn’t without Davenport.” Thwock nodded. “It’s a good boat. Even if it’s lopsided.”

“Let’s take it out, c’mon!” said Janie, running up to the side and pushing. The boat didn’t budge. “C’mon!”

“You’re not strong enough,” snickered Thwock, and joined her. The boat started to slide, just a little, and Ari joined them, grunting as it inched toward the water.

“Davenport, c’mon,” said Janie through clenched teeth.

Davenport hesitated. “My mom wouldn’t like it if I went out on the lake. It’s dangerous.”

“You have to,” grunted Thwock. “We don’t know how to steer it.”

Still, Davenport didn’t move. But…well, if they couldn’t steer it, then something bad might happen to them on the lake, and he couldn’t have that…his mom would understand that, right?

“Anyway, you’re so small, you can climb the rigging!” said Janie.

The idea was like a spark in his chest. He grinned, leapt forward beside Ari, and heaved. Slowly, the cutter slid into the water, and Janie leapt in, followed by Thwock.

“The oars are in there,” huffed Davenport, running alongside the boat into the water.

“Here, here!” Janie leaned down, offering her arms to him and Ari. They grabbed on, Davenport pulling himself up on her elbow, and Janie hauled them both onto the deck. Thwock already had an oar.

“Okay,” said Davenport, handing the other oar to Janie. “Steer us out into open water. The oar holes are um, right there.”

Thwock and Janie fit the oars in their holes and pushed the boat away from shore. Davenport stood on the deck and faced the water, the cool breeze kissing his face. The air seemed to fill his whole body, like he was floating. He grinned.

“Ari, take the tiller,” he said. “It’s just like steering a cart backwards, okay?”

“Um, okay.” She grabbed the lever. “Where are we going?”

“Wherever we want!” declared Davenport. “Up oars, guys.”

Janie and Thwock pulled the oars in. “Now what?”

“Now we’re sailing!” Davenport jumped up onto the mast and shimmied up into the rigging. There wasn’t a proper crow’s nest, so he grabbed onto the halyard and braced his legs against the mast. “This is so cool!”

“Where do I steer, Davenport!” There was a little panic in Ari’s voice.

“Starboard! To the right!” said Davenport jovially. The ship lurched a little, but Ari had remembered it was backwards, and on they sailed to starboard. 

He wriggled in delight. The wind whipped through his hair, flapping the sails. He could see the entire shoreline up here, weaving its way through the hills, with the sparkling water filling the valley. There was an island up ahead, too far to swim to, if he could swim. They could go there, yeah, if they could find a place to bring the ship ashore, or, oh, an anchor, they should have brought an anchor—maybe they’d just circle it today.

“This is great!” Janie jumped to the side and looked over. “What should we call it?”

“Something really really good,” Davenport called down. “Something beautiful.”

“Yeah!” said Janie. “Like Moonpie!”

Davenport cringed. “No, that’s—“

“Moonpie!” Thwock cackled. “Yes, it’s perfect.”

“I like it!” said Ari brightly, and went back to squinting at the tiller.

Davenport sighed. Names were important, but this was all of their ship, after all. “ _Moonpie_ it is, I guess. She’s a good ship. Uh, a little to port, Ari. Thwock, can you pull that rope?”

“This rope?”

“No, the other one.”

Thwock grabbed the rope and yanked. The sail caught the breeze the other direction and the _Moonpie_ lurched. 

Davenport lost his footing with a yelp. He slid halfway down the halyard—the rope burned his hands, and he could hear the others screaming—

And he fell, not onto the deck, but into the water with a _splash_.

And the world was all bubbles and the roar of water in his ears as he pawed the water uselessly—why didn’t he ever learn how to swim—

His lungs felt fit to burst as his last breath escaped his lips in a string of bubbles—

His vision started to go dark around the edges—

A strong orc arm appeared around his middle, and they burst out of the water.

“Grab him!” said Janie’s voice, and two pairs of hands hauled him on deck. He curled into a ball, hacking, throwing up water.

“Are you okay?” said Thwock’s voice. Davenport felt a hand on his shoulder. He kept coughing, tried to get a word out, but couldn’t.

“Gimme a hand?” said Janie’s voice.

“Yeah,” Thwock said, and the hand disappeared from his shoulder. Davenport tried to open his eyes, blearily. 

“Let’s go back,” said Ari’s voice.

* * *

“What were you thinking?”

Davenport huddled, shivering, in the biggest blanket in the house, while his friends stood around him. Even though they were all kids, they looked like giants in his uncle’s kitchen, an orc, an elf and a human, disproportionately large against the stove and the sink.

Despite this, they cowered before Amelia.

“Sailing out onto open water in a homemade boat?” Each syllable fell into place like a brick. She was absolutely furious, and they were in so, so much trouble. Davenport huddled deeper into this blanket.

“The _Moonpie’s_ a really good boat, though,” Thwock said, his voice smaller than usual. “We worked really hard—” 

“I don’t care if you built a royal battleship,” said mom, glaring up at Thwock. “You are children with absolutely no nautical training! It was dangerous! You should have asked for help at the very least, and at best burned the damn thing!”

Davenport cringed and squeezed his eyes shut. Not the _Moonpie_ , they couldn’t destroy the _Moonpie_ …

“No, no, please Miss Amy,” pleaded Janie. “She’s such a good boat, we can’t burn her!”

“No, you’ll just drown yourselves,” spat Mom.

“It was my fault, Miss Amy,” Thwock piped up. “Please don’t be mad at Davenport. I messed up.”

Mom sighed, and massaged the bridge of her nose. “You three should go home. Rest assured I will be speaking to each of your parents personally.” 

His friends didn’t move. “But…is Davenport in trouble?” murmured Ari.

Davenport had never loved them more.

“Davenport needs to rest,” said mom, and she said it like a threat. “Go home, kids.”

Chastened, they trooped out the back door, muttering their goodbyes. Davenport stuck a hand out of his blanket and waved.

As the back door closed, his mom seemed to deflate. She slumped into a chair and sighed again. Davenport waited for her to say something.

After a long silence, he eked out hoarsely, “I’m sorry.”

His mom looked at him, tears in her eyes. “I know, Davvy, I know. And I’m sorry I shouted. But you…” She swallowed. “You promised me.”

Davenport shuddered off a chill and sniffed. “I know but—but what if they were out there on the lake and they couldn’t steer and they got in trouble?”

“And you were going to save them?” said Mom, and the look on her face showed the same feeling he’d felt as he sank into the lake. “You could have died today, Davvy.”

Davenport looked down at the tile floor.

“No more sailing.”

He jerked upright. “No, please, mom, the _Moonpie_ is beautiful and I love her and I promise I won’t climb up into the rigging anymore, I swear—”

“What did I say?” she cut him off.

Davenport swallowed the rest of the sentence. His eyes welled up.

“Please.” She leaned toward him. “Keep your promise, Davenport.”

He nodded, and his eyes spilled over. She got up and threw her arms around him, stroking his hair.

* * *

“That’s awful.”

Davenport could see the indignation behind Lucretia’s poise. Oh, to have the sense of justice that the young had. He smiled wryly. “It was frustrating, certainly. But I’m not the first person to have an overprotective parent, and under the circumstances…I’ve long forgiven her for it.”

Lucretia nodded. “Did she ever let up?”

“Not really, no,” said Davenport quietly. “Not completely. But I think that’s a story for next time.”

“Is it time already?” Lucretia returned her quills to their wells. “Then I’ll see you next week, sir.”

Davenport nodded and hopped off the chair. Work to do, for as long as the Institute had money to pay for it. He opened the door, throwing a last glance over his shoulder as he did.

Lucretia had his trebuchet schematic in front of her and was painstakingly copying it into both journals. Davenport smiled, and left.


	3. Biography Interview (Subject: Davenport; Session 3)

Davenport shuffled into the little office and pulled himself up onto the chair, staring at the tabletop. “Afternoon.”

“Hello.” Lucretia’s voice was soft. Davenport looked up at her. She bit her lip. “I heard the news. One year left of funding?”

“That’s right.” He gritted his teeth. “How many projects can you finish in a year, do you think?”

“I’m not a scientist,” said Lucretia, “but I’ve interviewed quite a few over the last few weeks. I’m going to guess not many.”

“You’re correct.” Davenport folded his hands to keep them from forming fists. “This engine project of Streph’s and mine might as well be cancelled now. We might get one more prototype out, and we need another three.”

“These are engines for flying machines, correct?” asked Lucretia. She was already writing with both quills.

“Yes,” said Davenport, a little wistfully. “Highly sophisticated magi-mechanic designs that could propel an ‘air ship’ carrying a few dozen people. If we can get the damn things airborne.”

“You’ve warmed up to the use of magic in engineering over the years, haven’t you?” said Lucretia. “I’ve read through your project files. All your early projects were mechanical only.”

She was changing the subject, but Davenport was a bit relieved at the distraction. The shut-down was all anyone was talking about. “Streph’s mostly responsible for that. I used to be a real arcanaphobe.”

“I was under the impression all academy graduates had magical training,” said Lucretia.

“Oh, I did,” chuckled Davenport. “Kicking and screaming, I did.”

Lucretia smiled. “How did your…arcanophobia affect your early inventions?”

* * *

“Ready?” said Janie.

“Ready!” said Davenport and Ari from the seats of their homemade battle wagons. They were on a near-deserted stretch of road in the woods. The road sloped downhill before going back up again about a quarter mile, where Thwock was laying down a rope across the road for a finish line.

“All right,” said Janie. “We’re just waiting for a signal from Thwock.”

Davenport settled into the seat of his wagon, steely-eyed. Beside him, from her wagon, Ari shot him a grin. “You’re going down, Davenport.”

“Against that magic monstrosity?” he teased, gesturing to the sparkling glass cylinder that was her engine. “Not a chance.”

She stuck out her tongue. “Your gears and bolts are no match for my arcane power!”

“Hey Ari, how are you gonna see the finish line through those dirty specs?” Davenport shot back.

“Sorry, what? I can’t hear you over the sound of victory!”

“That’s the signal!” said Janie, and sure enough Thwock was standing in the middle of the road, both arms raised. Janie skidded to the side of the road, snatched up their stick-and-handkerchief flag, and leapt back between the cars. “Okay! Start your engines!”

Davenport flipped a few switches, and with a roar that settled into a purr, his wagon engine was alive. The feeling was electric. He grinned and grabbed the steering wheel.

Beside him, Ari pointed her stubby little wand at her engine in front of her seat. There was a sound like a window shattering, and then a tinkling of bells as the sparkles swirled.

Janie jumped up and down. “Oh man oh man, okay! Here we go!” She raised her flag. “On your marks! Get set!” Her smile dropped. “Miss Amy.”

“What?” Davenport threw a glance over his shoulder. His mother was marching down the road toward them with murder in her eye.

“Quick, turn it off, we’ll tell her we were just testing it,” said Ari, half-climbing out of her wagon.

“Should I give Thwock the signal to abort?” said Janie.

Davenport turned around, glowering at the engine. He’d been so close. 

No. He shook his head. She wasn’t going to stop him. Not this time. “Wave the flag, Janie.”

“What?” she said.

“Davenport, you’ll get in trouble,” Ari warned, wide-eyed, but she settled back into her seat.

“I don’t care! Wave the flag!”

Janie glanced at him, and then behind him, and smiled wildly. “Okay, okay, um—ready—set—”

Davenport shut off the main brake and grabbed the accelerator lever, preparing to crank it.

Janie brought down the flag. “—Go!”

The wagons peeled out down the road.

Davenport pushed the accelerator, as far as he dared, changing gears smoothly without losing any momentum, just as he’d designed the gear shift to do. Ari’s wagon was right beside him, keeping pace and pulling ahead, just a little. He flipped the switch to open the throttle—it leaked, even on the zero setting—and nudged the dial to the first marker. His wagon edged ahead, and he breathed shaky sigh. Easy, easy—

Ari raised her other hand, and flicked her wand, and her battlewagon juddered and jerked ahead. Nope. It was too early, he’d calculated this just right and it wasn’t until he passed the big maple he should do this, but he’d be damned if he let Ari win—

He cranked the throttle knob all the way.

His wagon exploded forward, faster than anything, faster than he’d ever seen anything go—Davenport shrieked with laughter as the trees around him became a blur, as rush of wind battered his face, more air than he could breathe—

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ari’s wagon creeping up, just as they approached the finish line, just as the fuel sputtered and began to run out—

They ran over the rope in the road in a whoosh, both wagons slowing, and it didn’t even matter if Davenport won or lost, because he was laughing, breathless and exhilarated, as he eased on the brake and his wagon slid to a halt.

“Too close to call!” shouted Thwock, running up beside their wagons. “That was amazing! You guys were so fast!”

Davenport rolled, still laughing, out of his wagon, grinning at Ari, who climbed out of hers, doubled over and panting. 

“I almost had you,” wheezed Davenport.

“Like…heck…you…did…” Ari managed.

“That’s what happens when you power a wagon with your own energy,” he teased.

“At least…I’m not out…of fuel,” she gasped.

“You sound pretty out of fuel to me!” he said gleefully.

“Guys? Guys.” Thwock shaded his eyes from the suns. “Janie’s waving. Who’s with her?”

Davenport’s bliss drained away. Oh yeah, he’d defied his mother and was now in Trouble.

No, he thought, looking at his steaming wagon engine. It was worth it. He braced himself and looked down the road.

Janie was frantically swinging her arms in the air. His mom was on the ground.

Panic jolted down Davenport’s spine. He took off running. He wasn’t at it more than a second before Ari’s wagon pulled up beside him, her wand raised to her engine. 

“Hop on,” she puffed, and Davenport did, and they rolled, not nearly so fast as before and not nearly fast enough, to where Janie now knelt over Amelia.

“Mom!” Davenport hopped off the wagon and plopped down beside her. She was breathing, but shallowly, and her eyes were fluttering.

“She fainted, I think,” said Janie, wringing her hands. “She started breathing really fast when I said Go and then she fell over.”

“Get…some…water,” panted Ari.

“For her or for you?” cried Janie.

“Mom?” Davenport ignored them and shook her gently by the shoulder. Gods, she was totally limp. “C’mon, wake up.”

Janie produced a waterskin and handed it to him. “Here.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Davenport demanded.

“Put a little…on her face,” said Ari.

Davenport swallowed nervously, spilled a little water on his hand, and carefully patted her forehead. She inhaled sharply and her eyes opened.

Davenport sighed in relief. “Mom?”

“Davvy.” She reached up and touched his face. “You’re all right?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

She took a deep breath and sat up, slowly. “Did I faint?” Her voice was quiet and flat. “How embarrassing.” 

Davenport’s relief turned back into indignation. “We should go home,” he said stiffly, standing up.

“We’ll take care of your wagon,” offered Janie.

Davenport looked to see how his mother would react to this. She said nothing, looking away. He offered her a hand to help her up, and she took it, still stonefaced. Her hand was shaking.

“Good game, Ari,” he said.

Ari had caught her breath now, and was looking worried. “Good game, Davenport. See you later.”

Davenport braced his mom under her trembling shoulder—he was as tall as she was now, so he had to stoop—and carefully walked her home.

She would start berating him any minute now. She would probably tell him that he was quarantined to the scrapyard with double homework and no helping Uncle Gray or working on projects. Maybe for a month. He’d done a week or so, and that was torture, but he’d never been in trouble like this—he’d never gone back on his promise.

No, that wasn’t quite true. He’d just never let her find out. The _Moonpie_ was still docked by Janie’s house. The battle wagons each had two prototypes. He’d long ago gotten Uncle Gray’s wagon engine to work, at least for a few minutes at a time. But he’d always been careful, because that was what she really wanted, right? Him to be safe? That was the point of the promise, and he was nothing if not safe. Mostly.

Still she was silent, all the way to the scrapyard, through the gates and into the little shack that had been home for years now. She let go of him so they could both go through the back door into the kitchen. 

“Would you make us some tea?” she said tiredly, and sat down at the table.

Davenport did, filling the kettle, putting it on the stove, putting the tea in the teapot. All methodically, carefully, lest the tension in the room suddenly snap. 

When he turned back around to face the table, she’d pulled his father’s watch out and was taking it apart for what must have been the millionth time. 

For some reason, the sight filled him with fury. He crossed his arms and glared at the ceiling above her head. “Are you going to say something?”

She’d removed the bezel and case by now and was carefully gutting the watch’s innards. “What do you suppose I should say?” she pronounced in a deadened tone.

“I don’t know,” Davenport snarled, his voice rising with every sentence. “Maybe that you’re really disappointed in me. It was _dangerous_. I could have _died_. I broke my promise.”

“I’ve said all those things before,” she said, in that same flat tone. “It doesn’t seem to have helped, does it?”

Davenport gritted his teeth. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“Good question.” Still maddeningly quiet.

“Maybe you can keep me from all the things I like!” Davenport shouted. “Take away building things and books and my friends! You know, flavor’s pretty crazy! Better start feeding me on porridge and water forever!”

The watch was all component parts now. Amelia glanced up at him blandly, and began putting it back together. “You’re upset because I don’t let you do anything fun?”

“I’m not upset! I’m—” He raked his hands through his hair. “You think I do this stuff for fun? Like, of course it’s fun, but it’s—it’s all I want to do, ever, Mom! Piloting and—and building things—and you’re gonna hold me to a promise I made when I was a kid?”

“And you want to do all this…why?” She slid a gear into its place. “To fly to the stars?”

Davenport’s face burned with embarrassment. “Don’t make fun of me!”

“Or maybe you want to be just like your dad?” And her tone went from mild to bitter.

With an infuriated scream, Davenport balled his fist and took a swing at the stove.

“ _Don’t._ ” 

The word stopped him like a wall. He froze mid-punch, shaking with the effort of holding himself back.

“Don’t you dare strike out in anger,” she said, quietly. “Ever. At anyone or anything.” 

He whirled to face her. “That’s easy for you to say! I—I just disobeyed you to your face, and I’m not sorry, and you’re not even annoyed!”

“That, Davvy, is where you’re wrong.” She looked him in the eye and snapped the casing on the watch shut. “Because you damn well didn’t get that temper from Arty.”

“Then yell at me or something!” Davenport shouted. “Quit playing with that stupid watch and let it all out for _once_ —”

“No!” she said sharply, finally. “Because I might be angry at you, Davvy, and don’t doubt for a minute that I don’t know that your little wagon must have had more than one failed prototype, but I’m a sure sight more angry at myself, understand?” She dropped the watch onto the table. “Because I made a nine-year-old swear to go against his nature, and because apparently my being _upright and conscious_ depends on your wellbeing, and because—” She balled her own fists now, pressing one up against her mouth for a moment—“Because somewhere deep in my guts I still think that if I get this godsdamned watch to work it’ll somehow bring your father back from beyond the grave!”

Davenport was struck speechless, all the anger frozen inside him like an icicle. His mother glared, not at him, but at the watch on the table.

The kettle whistled suddenly and Davenport jumped. He snatched it off the fire.

The whole room felt frozen and fragile. Davenport capitulated for a moment, and in lieu of anything else to do, poured the water into the teapot and replaced the kettle on the stove.

Amelia heaved a sigh. “How often do you break your promise?”

Davenport swallowed. He was still angry, but this didn’t feel like a fight anymore. “Six times since we built the _Moonpie_.”

“Oh gods,” said his mother, voice trembling. “Don’t—don’t say anything else.”

She pressed her hand against her mouth. Davenport dropped his gaze. This wasn’t _fair_. She shouldn’t get to make him feel guilty about this. He pulled a couple of cups from a cupboard and poured the tea, placing a cup in front of his mom.

“Thank you.” She took a shaky drink. Davenport did the same, filling the stillness.

Uncle Gray wandered into the kitchen, whistling. “Davvy! How’d it—” He spotted Amelia and trailed off.

“She knows,” mumbled Davenport.

“Oh,” said Gregor. “Oh dear.”

Amelia’s head jerked up. “You were in on this?” she snapped.

Gregor sighed. “Mel, you’re stifling the boy. Let him go.”

She growled. “Fine. All right. Fine.” She stood up and snatched the watch up from the table and took her cup. “I hereby absolve you from your promise. Will you be careful?”

Davenport looked up sharply. “W-wh—yeah, of course.” 

“Good.” She shoved a finger in Gregor’s chest. “You make sure of that.”

“All right?” said Gregor, puzzled.

“And I don’t want to hear another word about it, not a word. Do what you want.” She breezed out of the kitchen.

“Well, that’s good news, right?” said Gregor, scratching under the goggles on his head.

“I…I guess so,” Davenport murmured. Free. He was free. 

“Now, your race!” Gregor strode into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of tea. “How did it go?”

Davenport threw a glance after his mom. “Uh…it was a tie.”

* * *

Davenport loosed a humorless chuckle. “All these stories end up being about my mother.”

Lucretia nodded. “It happens often enough.”

“I suppose as a biographer you hear a lot of sob stories,” said Davenport quietly.

“As a biographer, I’ve learned that our parents inevitably shape us,” Lucretia answered. “There’s no avoiding it. Only understanding it.”

Davenport folded his hands on the desk and nodded slowly.

“Were you on better terms with her, after that?” Lucretia asked.

“Uh, worse. For a few years, anyway.” Davenport unfolded his hands and refolded them again. “We didn’t speak much. Like living in a house with a ghost. I knew all the things I was interested in would just scare her.”

“Did the two of you ever work things out?”

“Eventually. Right before I left for the academy.”

“How?”

Davenport kicked his legs under his chair and considered how to answer. “She decided to let go.”

Lucretia wrote this down, then paused. “The watch that you carry with you doesn’t happen to be your father’s watch, does it?”

“It is, actually.” He dug it out of his pocket and set it carefully on the table.

Lucretia returned one of her quills to its inkpot. “May I?”

Davenport nodded, and she picked it up and unlatched the cover to look at the face. It was a gnome watch, so it looked tiny in her long fingers. Her eyebrows rose. “But it works.”

“Ah, yes.”

“Did you finally figure out what was wrong with it?” she asked, turning the watch in one hand and sketching it in her journal with another.

Davenport hesitated. “Well. Not really.”

She looked up. “Oh?” She offered the watch back.

He took it. “It’s…hard to explain.”

Lucretia took her second quill out of its pot and waited.

Davenport sighed. “All right.”

* * *

Janie knelt down to hug Davenport. “You’re not going to forget about us when you’re famous, right?”

Davenport laughed and mussed her hair. “Nah, I could never forget about you guys.”

Janie mussed his hair right back. “Good. You better not.”

“We’ll miss you guys,” sniffled Thwock, from where he was hugging Ari.

“We’ll miss you too,” Ari said, carefully extricating herself from the hug.

“We’ll come back to visit,” said Davenport, patting Thwock’s hip, which was as high as he could reach. 

Thwock dropped down to hug him too. “Easy for you to say, you’re just headed into the city! Ari’s only going there so she can get on a train!”

“Luckily, trains run both ways,” said Uncle Gregor, chuckling. His wagon was parked nearby, loaded up with a suitcase for both Ari and Davenport.

“Still!” Thwock released Davenport from his embrace and wiped his eye. “Gods. I’ll miss you so much.”

“When we come back, we’ll have a million new things to try,” Davenport told him.

“All kinds of new magic,” Ari added, from where she was hugging Janie.

“And mechanics,” Davenport shot back. Thwock laughed through his tears and stood up.

“I still can’t believe you got into the Planer Research Academy and you’re not going,” said Janie, brushing a lock of hair away from Ari’s glasses. 

Ari smiled shyly. “The University Arcanum is a perfectly good school.”

“Not like the Academy,” said Thwock.

“Well, Davenport wins for being impressive, then,” said Ari.

“ _Yes_.” Davenport pumped his fist. The friends laughed.

“Hey, where’s your mom?” asked Janie, throwing a glance over her shoulder at the scrapyard’s gates.

Davenport’s good mood soured a little. “We already said our goodbyes.” Which was mostly true, in that he’d given her a few stiff words and a stiff hug that morning and hadn’t seen her since.

“We’d better, too.” Janie threw her arms out, half-crouching so she could hug each of them in one arm. “Good luck. We love you.”

Thwock nodded damply and swallowed back more tears. “Yeah.”

“We love you too,” Davenport, as seriously as he could manage. 

“Davvy?”

Davenport’s heart sank. Amelia had appeared in the gateway to the scrapyard. She paused when she saw all his friends. “Oh.”

“Hi, Miss Amy!” said Janie, probably forcing the cheerfulness a little too much.

“Hello,” said Amelia uneasily, making her way into the circle of the send-off party.

“Hi,” added Thwock, dragging hand across his face to clean up the tears and tugging on Janie’s elbow. “We should…we should let Davenport say goodbye.”

“Yeah, um.” Janie waved. “Bye, Ari. Bye, Davenport.”

Davenport wished they wouldn’t leave. “Goodbye,” he said weakly.

“Bye, guys,” said Ari, glancing back and forth between them and Davenport and Amelia.

Uncle Gray cleared his throat. “Young lady, shall we get you settled in your seat?”

“Yes, please,” said Ari, relieved.

And his friends were gone, and Ari and Gregor were on the other side of the wagon, and Davenport was alone with his mother. They stood in awkward silence for a moment.

“I…had a few things I wanted to tell you,” said Amelia finally. “I know things haven’t been…good between us, but…well.”

Davenport averted his gaze. He had to admit that this was true. The freedom he’d been given almost hadn’t been worth it.

“At any rate, your father would be proud of you,” she said briskly. “And so am I.”

Davenport looked up in surprise. “Are you?”

“Yes.” She swallowed. “Terrified, but proud.”

Something tight and coiled in Davenport’s chest began to unwind for the first time in years. “Oh.”

“And if I can ask something of you?” She said, and pulled his father’s watch out of her pocket. “I’ve…obsessed over this for long enough. I think it’s only right that you should have it.” She held it out to him.

Davenport froze. Because sure, it was a watch that didn’t work, but he didn’t really have anything else of his dad’s. He took it, gingerly. “Thanks.”

His mother nodded, and sniffed, flicking away a tear. “Anyway. You had better leave before I do something foolish.”

“Okay,” he said, cradling the watch in both hands. “Um. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” she said, and clasped her hands together until her knuckles turned white. 

Davenport turned away, circled the wagon, and climbed up onto the seat behind Ari. He didn’t take his eyes off the watch.

“You okay?” Ari asked. Gregor nudged Jammy the mule into motion.

“Yeah,” said Davenport, running his thumbs over the case. “I’m fine.”

“You two have quite the adventure ahead,” said Gregor cheerfully. “You’ll have to write lots of letters.”

“I know I will,” said Ari. “My grandmas made me promise on pain of death.”

Davenport chuckled. “I’ll write too.” Maybe even to his mother.

“Got to tell me all about whatever new mechanical things they’re doing at the Academy,” said Gregor.

“Sure thing, Uncle Gray.”

They fell into silence. Davenport clutched the watch in his hands and watched the trees go by.

_Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick._

Davenport’s gaze snapped back to the watch. He held it up to his ear.

_Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick._

He opened the lid. The time was wrong, of course, but the second hand was making its way around the face steadily, as if it had never stopped.

“Holy shit,” he breathed.

“What?” said Ari.

“Stop the wagon,” said Davenport, snapping the watch shut and standing up.

“Pardon me?” said Gregor in disbelief, but Davenport had already swung himself off the seat, jumped to the ground, stumbled, regained his feet, and taken off running.

His mother was still at the gates of the scrapyard. She straightened up when she saw him coming.

“Wh-what’s—” she began as he reached her, but he just opened the watch and shoved it into her hands.

She frowned, first at him and then at the watch, but the frown melted away into a look of disbelief.

“Mom, it works,” Davenport panted. “Did you—did you do this?”

“No, I—” She shook her head. “How can this be?”

They both stared at the watch as it tick, tick, ticked.

“What does it mean?” Davenport whispered.

She snapped the watch shut and looked at him, lip trembling. “It means you’re supposed to go.” She shoved the watch back into his hands and took him by the shoulders. “Go, Davvy, go take everything you want. Go fly to the stars.”

He nodded frantically. “I will. I will.”

“Good.” She pulled him into a desperate hug, and kissed his forehead, and let him go. “Go!”

“Okay!” He turned on his heel to run back to the wagon, and paused. “I love you!”

“I love you too!” His mother was laughing now, and crying too. “Go!”

Davenport barreled back toward the wagon.

* * *

Lucretia was awestruck. “That really happened?”

Davenport nodded. “Happened just like that.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “That’s…that’s incredible. How?”

“I still don’t know.” Davenport threw out his hands. “I can hardly believe it myself, but the watch works.”

“That’s magic, or…or a miracle, or something,” she said.

“None of my family knew magic then, and I’m not sure about miracles.” He shook his head. “I can’t explain it.”

“Wow.” Lucretia wrote in her journals frantically. “What a story. What do you think it was?”

“I try not to speculate.”

She looked up, with just the hint of a smile. “But if you had to guess.”

Davenport leaned back and looked at the ceiling for a long moment, thinking. Lucretia waited.

“Streph’s got this idea about the fundamental nature of the universe,” Davenport began. “There’s not much explaining things like goodness and altruism, how folk know right from wrong, you know? At least not from a physical standpoint. But she thinks it comes from a physical force in the world, like a kind of…energy.” He frowned. “Does that make sense?”

“A kind of physics for love?” asked Lucretia.

“Sort of, yes,” said Davenport, shifting in his seat. “If there’s any explanation for…spontaneous watch repair…I think it’s that.”

Lucretia smiled and wrote this down.

Davenport turned the watch over a couple times in his hand and opened it again. “Ah. Time to go.”

“Right. Until next week, sir.”


	4. Biography Interview (Subject: Davenport; Session 4)

“You don’t think this whole thing is way overblown?” asked Davenport, climbing the stairs with Streph.

“I think people are actually underselling it,” said Streph. “You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve heard.”

Davenport shook his head. “Call me a skeptic, but even if it is a new powerful energy source, there’s no guarantee that we can harness it.”

“Oh, but that’s the least of what it can do, from what I understand,” she said, hopping up a few steps ahead of him and walking backwards. “People are saying it gives off this…this aura. Of inspiration. They’re calling it the light of creation.”

He chuckled. “The light of creation, which fell from the sky to save the Institute.”

Streph laughed. “Look, I know it’s poetic nonsense. But I also know that old Vertan did some tests on the light yesterday and then immediately wrote an experimental method for testing a whole new concept of the nature of matter.”

Davenport stopped mid-step. “Alan Vertan? Alan ‘The Four Humors Are Good Medical Practice’ Vertan?”

“Yeah!” Streph grinned, showing off her sharp teeth. “So there’s got to be something to this.” 

“So when do we get to see it?” asked Davenport, jogging the rest of the way up the stairs.

“Tomorrow.”

Davenport smiled. “I can’t wait, then.” They reached the top of the steps and made their way down the hall.

“You think we should go on trying to channel its energy?” asked Streph. “What if we come up with something better?”

“It’s all got to go through the director anyway,” said Davenport, shrugging. “We’ll see what we come up with.”

“I, for one, wait with bated breath.” Streph opened the door to Lucretia’s little office for him. “Hi, Lucretia. Later, Dav.”

“Bye, Streph,” said Davenport, hopping up onto the chair as she left. “Afternoon, Lucretia.”

“Hello,” she said. She was in the midst of trimming a quill with a penknife. “You seem in good spirits.”

“Hard not to be,” he said, chuckling. “This ridiculous ball of light from the sky might have just saved the Institute.”

“I’ve been hearing all about it this week,” said Lucretia. “Does anyone know what it is yet?”

“None of our tests are quite finished,” he said, settling into his seat. “All we know is that it is powerful, and that it’s…strangely enticing.”

“You know, that’s the first straightforward answer I’ve gotten today,” said Lucretia, dipping her new pen in an inkwell and testing it on one of her open journals. “I suspect everyone else just made something up.”

Davenport chuckled. “Scientists are wont to do that.”

“Well then.” Lucretia closed her penknife and took up her other quill. “Last week we left off as you were leaving for the academy. I’d like to pick up there.”

“Certainly.”

She began to write. “Many people apply several years in a row in order to get their chance. Did you?”

“No, they accepted me on the first go-round,” he said. “There were far fewer applicants back then, though. Much less competition.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you pay for your education?”

“Oh, I’d been saving up for years. I did odd jobs all over the village, and my uncle took me on as sort of a part-part-time employee. Contributed when he could.”

Lucretia raised an eyebrow. “That’s a lot of gold to save doing odd jobs.”

“But the Academy didn’t cost as much then,” Davenport countered. “And I spent none of it, if I could help it. Living in a scrapyard helped, I could still build things without having to buy parts. My uncle helped pay my way, but I thank him most for letting me use his scrap. It was good practice.”

“Is your uncle still with us?” she asked.

“He is.” Davenport smiled fondly. “Old man selling scrap and inventing junkers. I visit him as often as I can.”

Lucretia smiled too. “Now, you were one of the first gnomes to be admitted to the Academy.”

Davenport’s smile fell. “I was, yes.”

“Why do you suppose there were so few?”

He considered this question carefully. “I think part of it’s cultural. The Academy was founded by humans and elves and dwarves, and run by them. We often consider ourselves a race apart. Keeping to ourselves, as it were. It’s different now, but you still see it here and there.”

“Only part of it is cultural, though?”

Davenport rolled his eyes. “And the other part is if we decided we wanted to enter society at large, we weren’t often made welcome. People might…might laugh at a gnome on a stage, or go to one to get their kettle patched, but would they work with one? Would they take us seriously?”

“Did you feel that way, when you first came to the Academy?”

He frowned. “From the first day.”

* * *

Davenport hurried into the classroom, books clutched to his chest, his satchel flapping against his leg. Just in time, it seemed; the room was full of students, but they were still talking and he didn’t see a professor yet. 

It was a pretty big class. Humans, elves, dwarves, a few halflings and orcs. He was the only gnome here, but that was to be expected. Where to sit? Most of the chairs were full—

A human made eye contact with him, and then turned to the dwarf beside her and snickered.

Davenport frowned and ignored her. There really were no free chairs, except in the back row on either side of—

Oh gods. 

She was a tiefling, scarlet-skinned, long curving horns, the whole deal. She sat staring at the table in front of her seat, shifting occasionally in her chair, her face as stony as a gargoyle.

Davenport hesitated. Tieflings were literally demon spawn. He’d never met one. You didn’t talk about them, except in whispers, maybe. But there really were no other seats.

All right then. She wasn’t likely to start speaking infernal and flinging fireballs in class, after all. 

He marched to the back, slid his books onto the table without a glance at his neighbor, and hopped up onto the chair.

The table came up to his chin. Of course it did. Davenport peeked under the chair. No way to adjust it. If he moved it closer maybe he could kneel—oh, nope, the chair was bolted to the floor. Damn.

He caught the tiefling side-eyeing him. She averted her gaze, and shifted in her chair yet again.

Davenport sighed and slid off the chair. Surely there was something he could—ah, here. He slid his books off the table and onto the chair, and clambered to the top of the stack. There, that was a bit better. He dug his paper and a pencil out of his satchel and paused. The table was still sort of an awkward height, and a little too far away. And the edge of the chair bit uncomfortably into his calves. He put his heels up on the chair’s seat. Not ideal, but it was a little more comfortable, and now he could use his knees as a desk. Good.

He set his satchel on the table and got ready to take notes.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the tiefling wince and shift again. This time he noticed her moving her tail—gods, a tail—from one side of the chair to the other. It didn’t look terribly comfortable. 

Davenport felt an unexpected pang of kinship. This place hadn’t been built for her, either.

The tiefling grimaced and sat up straighter, scooting in her seat. Davenport hesitated, and then said, “Hey.”

She looked up at him in surprise. 

“What if you put your tail through the back?” he said.

She pursed her lips, glancing behind her, and then half-stood to ease her tail under the lower rail of the chair back. She settled back into her seat thoughtfully.

“That is a bit better,” she said. Her voice was softer than he’d expected. “Thank you.”

“Sure,” said Davenport. 

“So long as I don’t have to get out in a hurry,” she added, smiling a little.

Davenport chuckled. “Let’s hope there’s not a fire, I guess.”

She grinned, revealing a mouthful of sharp teeth. “Fire doesn’t bother me much.”

He laughed nervously and fell quiet. What do you say to something like that?

“Good morning, students,” said a sharp voice from the front. An elderly elf had entered, snatched up a piece of chalk, and was now writing a disturbingly long equation on the board. “I am Professor Husa, and this is a highly advanced mathematics course that is not for the faint of heart.”

Davenport straightened up. Good.

“Many of you will fail,” the professor went on. “Few of you will do well. But you will all learn something, so help me.” He finished his equation and replaced his chalk. “We will start here. You have ten minutes to solve this problem for x, starting now.”

The room burst into a flurry of pencil and paper noises. Davenport copied down the equation, but paused, staring at his paper. Something about this wasn’t right.

“Pst.”

Davenport looked up at the tiefling. She shook her head. “Don’t bother. It’s unsolvable.”

“Really?”

She nodded, and then slid her book over and flipped it open, turning a few pages. “Here it is. It’s famous.”

Davenport leaned forward from his stack of books and spotted the equation, stroke for stroke, followed by a theorem that seemed to go for a few pages. He followed it for enough lines to see the circular logic and chuckled. “Oh, that’s sneaky.”

“I heard he does things like this all the time,” she said. “Only half the people who take this class pass. And to get a good grade it’s almost impossible.”

“Then we’ve got to be on our guard,” said Davenport. “You’re already doing great.”

She smiled again. “I just read the book.”

“I should get on that too,” said Davenport, tapping the book underneath him. “When I’m not using it as a booster seat.”

She laughed, and that too was softer than he’d expected.

“Looks like our misfit students in the back there have the right idea,” declared the professor, and instantly the entire room turned to look at them. The tiefling froze.

Davenport glared at the professor. Misfits indeed! As if they weren’t already enough of a spectacle. The professor didn’t seem to notice.

“Collaboration,” said the professor, “is key to quality science. It adds both accountability and perspective. We could all look to them for an example, except perhaps when it comes to climbing furniture like a goat?”

“Needs must, sir,” said Davenport hotly. “You may not have noticed, but I’m pretty short.”

Scattered laughter echoed around the room. The professor rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything, and the students went back to the task at hand.

Davenport balled his fists. “I can’t believe picked us out like that.”

The tiefling was looking down at her lap. She didn’t answer.

“As if everyone didn’t already know without him making a big deal out of it,” Davenport muttered.

She sniffled.

Davenport frowned. Oh no. He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “Are you okay?”

She looked up at him, teary-eyed. “I knew this was a bad idea. I knew I shouldn’t have come.”

Oh, poor girl. He put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, he was just being a jerk.”

“No,” said the tiefling, shaking her head. “I don’t belong here.”

Davenport winced. He knew that feeling. He let go of her shoulder. What to say?

“You came to the Academy for a reason, right?” he asked.

She nodded and brushed some tears away. “I want to build things.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” She swallowed. “Something that changes everything.”

Davenport recognized the reverence in her tone. “Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean.” He hooked a thumb toward the professor. “Are you going to let him take that away from you?”

She looked at Davenport, then at the professor for a good long while. After a moment she set her jaw. “No.”

“No, right?” agreed Davenport, smiling a little. “Screw him. He’s not worth your tears.”

She grinned that pointy demon grin. “Hell no.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Davenport, sitting up straight again. “We’re going to destroy this class.”

“We’ll show him what misfits can do,” she said.

Davenport grinned and stuck out a hand. “Well, fellow misfit, I’m Davenport.”

She shook, her long clawed fingers enveloping his. “Streph Darkmantle.”

* * *

“Of course these days you see any number of gnomes and tieflings around here,” said Davenport. “And other folk too, dragonborn, goliaths and tabaxi—I saw a couple of kenku in this last incoming class. Streph and I have both taught classes.”

“You’re inspirational,” said Lucretia.

“Hardly,” said Davenport, shaking his head. “We just chased what we wanted.”

“Even so, it takes great courage,” she said. “And you certainly inspired Streph, didn’t you?”

“That first time, sure,” said Davenport, chuckling. “We took turns with that.”

“Oh?”

* * *

Davenport burst through the door to one of the engineering labs to find it empty, except for Streph at a drafting table. She jumped.

“Gods, Dav, thanks for knocking,” she muttered. “You broke my pencil.”

“So why don’t you cast Mend on it?” Davenport snapped, and drew back a leg to kick a chair.

“That’s actually a good idea.” She snapped her fingers, and he heard a tiny _zip_. “What’s eating you?”

Davenport gritted his teeth and slowly put down his foot. “ _Apparently_ , unless I take four arcana classes next year, I can’t graduate.”

“Oh, this again.” She bent back down over her work. “You know it’s part of the core. It was only a matter of time.”

“I don’t _want_ to use magic,” Davenport shouted, pacing through the lab. “Magic is _cheating_. It’s never going to be useful. I just want to make mechanical things and I don’t think it’s too much to ask to take classes that I’m actually going to _use_!”

“No one says you have to use it.” Streph bit her pencil, adding more needle sharp marks to the already beleaguered wood. “They’re not allowed to fail you if you can’t.”

“They’re gonna make me try, and I won’t. I won’t do it.” 

“You’re just being stubborn.”

“Hell yes I’m being stubborn! It’s the principle of the matter!” He threw his hands into the air. “That’s it. I’m quitting.”

Streph rolled her eyes. “You’re not quitting.”

“I am too. I’m quitting and I’m getting out of here so I can build what I want!” Davenport hopped up into the chair he didn’t kick and crossed his arms. “I’m gonna leave at the end of the semester. It was nice knowing you, Streph.”

She looked up with genuine concern. “When was the last time you slept?”

“I don’t know,” he grumbled.

“That is the wrong answer. How about food, did you remember to eat today?”

Davenport shrugged. “Did you?”

“Irrelevant. You need sleep.”

“You need food,” he countered.

“Don’t turn this back on me, you’re ready to quit just because you have to take some classes you don’t want to take.”

“I’m not ready to quit, I _am_ quitting.”

She leaned over her drafting table, resting her chin on her hand. “You’re serious about this.”

“Like the godsdamned grave.” He slid down further in his chair. “I want to get as far away from here as possible.”

Streph frowned. “Why?”

“Because of the stupid classes, I told you—”

“I don’t think so.” She put down her pencil and tapped her claws against her chin. “Something else is bothering you too.”

Davenport slid a little farther down. “What do you know?”

“I know you got a letter yesterday.” She lowered her voice, even softer than usual. “You homesick?”

He let his head thud against the back of the chair and groaned.

“You are, aren’t you?”

“Shut up.”

“You should go home for a while,” said Streph. “I’ll take notes for you. Make sure you don’t miss anything. I bet Professor Idowe would let you take the test another time.”

“Why should I go home?” Davenport demanded. “It’s just going to be my mom pretending I don’t go to the Academy and not asking what I’m doing and me and my uncle sneaking off to talk about it.”

“And some homemade meals, and your own bed, and visiting with friends.” Streph picked up her pencil again and drew a few lines. “And some rest.”

Davenport groaned again and slid down so his legs were hanging off the chair. Streph turned back to her work for a minute or two.

“She’s sick,” he mumbled. “My mom.”

Streph looked up in alarm.

“That’s what the letter said.” He pulled himself up on the chair, legs and all, and curled up into a ball.

Streph watched him sit like that for a bit.

“Don’t do something you’ll regret,” she said quietly. “Go home, Davenport.”

Davenport nodded, just a little.

“And then come back and take your stupid magic classes.”

“I’m never going to use magic,” he muttered into his knees.

“So take something useless.” She leaned back and frowned at the paper. “Like Illusions.”

Davenport sighed. “Okay.”

Streph put down her pencil and rubbed her temples under her horns. “I am starving. You hungry?”

He nodded.

“Let’s go eat. I’m not gonna finish this tonight.” She stood up and held out a hand.

He took it, allowed her to pull him off the chair and to his feet. “Hey Streph?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

* * *

Lucretia was writing frantically. “It’s no wonder you two have worked together so long, and so well.”

“We have been friends a very long time.”

“And that was when your mother passed away?”

Davenport nodded and sighed. “Of all the things I owe Streph…I’m most grateful for that.”

She nodded, then paused. “She called you by a nickname. She’s the first person I’ve heard do that.”

“There’s never been a question of respect with Streph.”

“Are you two…” She let the question trail off.

Davenport shook his head. “Thinking like a human again. No.”

“My apologies,” said Lucretia. “Just friends, then.”

“’Just friends’ makes it sounds like something less.” Davenport stood up straight. “I’m not afraid to say I love Streph. She’s important to me.”

“Friends are family you get to choose,” Lucretia quoted.

“Trite, but true,” said Davenport.

Lucretia smiled wryly. “I think we’re out of time for now. I’ll let you get back to work.”

“Right.” Davenport hopped off the chair.

“Incidentally,” said Lucretia as he reached the door, and paused. 

Davenport half-turned in the doorway to listen.

Lucretia went on, hesitantly. “It’s…it’s not usually my policy to share what other subjects have told me—at least not before publication…but Streph has told me the same sort of things about you.”

Davenport smiled.


	5. Biography Interview (Subject: Davenport; Session 5)

“I believe congratulations are in order,” said Lucretia, as Davenport hopped up onto the chair in her office.

“And here I was just about to offer you condolences,” Davenport said. “I heard they’re cutting your archive program short.”

“It’s all right,” said Lucretia, waving a hand. “This hasn’t been time wasted. In fact, I have quite a substantial body of research done for preliminary biographies—there will be time to fill them out later.”

“I’m glad that my good fortune didn’t come at the expense of yours,” said Davenport with a grin. He hadn’t been able to stop grinning since the director approved their idea.

“I heard a little about your project. I must say, the idea is captivating, but do you believe you can do it?” Lucretia hadn’t picked up her quills yet. She leaned forward. “To leave the material plane? Is such a thing even possible?”

“You know, I keep asking myself the same question,” said Davenport, leaning in as well. “But there’s something about this…light of creation. Everything seems possible.”

“And the director approved it?” asked Lucretia.

“Director Auchenloss is approving everything that comes across her desk these days,” said Davenport, grinning like a maniac. “Whatever it is this light of creation is doing, she’s got it bad.”

Lucretia laughed and leaned back. “I was allowed to go and see it. There’s something about it that’s so captivating.”

Davenport nodded incredulously. “All these new ideas. It’s an exciting time to be a scientist.”

“Now this idea of yours, this…ship?” asked Lucretia. “Is ship the right word?”

“I picture it like a ship,” said Davenport. “It looks like a ship in Streph’s and my plans, at least on the surface, but it’s going to be so complex—something like this has never been done before, an interplanar transport system, gods—” He laughed breathlessly. “It’s almost—it’s romantic, you know? To call her a ship. But what a ship she’ll be.”

Lucretia was transfixed. “That’s beautiful.” She picked up her quills. “Do you mind if I…”

He gestured to her journals. “By all means. If we get it to work, everyone will know.”

“How will it be powered?” asked Lucretia, writing furiously.

“That’s the best part. You remember me telling you about Streph’s idea about the…what did you call it? The physics of love?”

“I remember,” said Lucretia, looking up. “Do you mean to tell me that she’s right?”

Again, the grin spread across his face. “She was. She is!”

“How do you—” Lucretia frowned. “I don’t understand. How do you power a ship with love?”

“It’s uh…it’s pretty complicated, actually.” Davenport considered. “If I’m honest, I’m more interested in making it work than exactly what it is on a fundamental level…here, why don’t I tell it to you like Streph told it to us?”

“Us?”

“Oh, yeah uh…” He frowned. “Let’s see…Ari came to teach here a while back. Apparently they’re not big on application of arcane principles at the University Arcanum.”

“Yes, Miss Darkmantle has mentioned her to me. She’s the same Ari?”

“The very same. And Janie moved to the city a long time ago, to be a journalist. They both hit it off with Streph—especially Ari—so we thought we’d bring Thwock out here for a visit, and—”

“All of you?” asked Lucretia, delighted.

“Yeah, it’s only happened a few times since, but I do like having all my friends in one room.” Davenport smiled fondly. “Thwock doesn’t get out here often—he’s got a garage back in our home village, runs that with his daughters. And Janie’s pretty busy with her work. But once in a while we manage.”

“So this was the first time this happened?” she clarified.

“That’s right.”

* * *

“It’s just—it’s just—listen.” Thwock refocused his eyes. He’d been drinking too much. They’d all been drinking too much, but Davenport wasn’t about to stop this very pleasant party, not while this warm feeling in his soul was lingering. He sat in the booth in their usual bar by Ari, who was leaning against Streph, across from Janie and Thwock.

“I just feel like you all—you friends and ladies and Davenport—you’re out there! Doing stuff! And what do I do?” Thwock waved a hand. “Nothing!”

“No,” protested Davenport, and the others joined in.

“You run the only garage in the village,” said Janie. “And in all the villages around it, too.”

“You have two pr-b-prettyful daughters,” slurred Streph. She was pretty far gone.

At the mention of his daughters, a slow smile crept across Thwock’s face. “Yeah. You wanna see a picture?”

“You’ve shown us the picture like a million times,” yawned Ari, resting her head on Streph’s shoulder.

“Let him show it again,” chuckled Davenport. Hearing Thwock talk about his daughters made that warm feeling warmer.

Thwock snatched the little portrait out of his pocket and laid it reverently on the table. “Look at them. My beautiful girls. They’re perfect.”

“So what if they’re your—your legacy?” asked Janie, throwing her arm around Thwock’s shoulders. “Wouldn’t that be okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah! You know what?” Thwock thumped his fist on the table. “Yeah! I love them.”

“There you go,” said Janie, and downed the end of her ale. “But how about me, huh? I barely do anything at all.”

“Everybody knows your name, though,” mumbled Ari.

“You’re trusted,” added Davenport. “People—people trust you. Because you always tell the truth.”

“Mkay, but what does that even do?” Janie said. “’Cuz I’ll report on the news and then it changes, and I report on the new news and then it changes, and I report on the new new news, and—the thing that I wrote last week is just gone! Forever! And no one remembers it! And nothing changes, I just tell people what’s going on right now.”

Streph shook her head blearily. “What?” 

“You know, what difference am I making?” Janie sighed.

“You made me change from that bank on Great Track Street,” yawned Ari. “You know. ‘Cause of the embezzling.”

“That one story from last year made the governor pay attention to crime,” offered Davenport. 

“Yeah,” said Ari. “’Cause of the embezzling.”

“Really?” asked Janie, wide-eyed.

“It’s the wrong queshun,” said Steph, reaching out to Janie. “It doesn’t matter.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Davenport, leaning around Ari to look at her.

“It’s ssshtupid to ask if you make a di—a difference,” she insisted.

Thwock looked affronted. “You a nihilist or what?”

“I’m not a nile-ist,” she said. “It’s jus’…wrong, cuz you always affect everything. Always ‘n forever.”

“Aww, this again?” groaned Davenport.

“Don’t—don’t—shh, don’t.” She stuck a finger out at Davenport’s mouth. “It’s a thing. It’s real.”

“What’s real?” asked Janie.

“She thinks love is a physical force,” said Davenport, waving Streph’s hand away from his face. “Stop.”

“But it’s not jus’ love, Dav, ‘snot. Everything is connecected.” She took her empty glass and Ari’s and moved them around each other in a circle. “The math of gravity—you know, Koulomp’s law, it says—it says even small small things suck each other in, and—and chemistry is all about how things bond, and nothing exshists without affecting everything else.” She pointed to Janie. “So maybe, maybe it feels like nothing changes, but by doing s-stuff, your stuff, by tryna make word be—world—make the world better—do you see? And you—she shifted her finger to Thwock— “you made _people_. Who you love. And they’re gonna do stuff too. You done—you did change the world, ‘cuz you’re in it. Being you. And if everyday connections are—they’re have got power, then what about love? And friendship? How much more powerful?”

Janie laid her hand on her heart. “That’s beautiful.”

“But even if that is true fi—filla—” Davenport concentrated. “Philosophically—you can’t quantify it, so you can’t prove it. It’s a nice sentiment, but it’s not science.”

“We can’t quanlify it _yet_ ,” said Streph, looking smug. “You’ll see.”

Ari rolled her head over to look at Davenport. “How would you prove it?”

“Consistent observable phenomena,” he answered promptly. “You can’t measure connections between people. It’s subjective, like magic.”

Ari blinked owlishly. “Observable phenomena?”

“Yeah.”

“So what if…” She looked at her hands carefully and yawned. “…A variation on True Sight…” She turned her palms over. “Yeah. Like this?”

The table underneath her hands exploded into light, which dissolved into clearly delineated white threads that scattered like something alive under her fingers…and suddenly the whole booth was encircled with them, surrounding each of them, in and through them—Davenport saw a distinct line between the picture of Thwock’s daughters and Thwock’s chest, between Thwock and himself, between himself and each of his friends, between his own chest and the pocket where his father’s watch was—

It lasted for two seconds, and then it was gone.

“Mhmm,” said Ari contentedly, and leaned back against Streph.

Davenport suddenly felt a lot more sober. Nobody moved, except Janie, who let out a “Woah.”

“Ari, you just—” Streph swallowed. “You jus’ proved—”

Ari snored.

* * *

Lucretia stopped writing to look up, flabbergasted. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not,” said Davenport, grinning.

“But you still remained skeptical of her theory?” Lucretia asked. “Even after that?”

“Well that night I was a believer, that’s for sure,” he laughed. “But once we’d all sobered up—Ari couldn’t remember how she’d done it. We couldn’t repeat it.”

“Really?” said Lucretia in disbelief.

“We were very drunk,” Davenport admitted. “And if we couldn’t repeat it, we couldn’t study it. There was no guarantee that what Ari cast wasn’t just a complex illusion or something. She sure as hell couldn’t figure it out.”

Lucretia looked crestfallen. She started writing again. “That seems like such a missed opportunity.”

“It’s not missed anymore, though, that’s the thing.” He leaned toward her. “Because Ari walked into the room with the light of creation and she said she immediately remembered how she cast it, all those years ago. And she cast it again.”

“And?” asked Lucretia, spellbound.

“As far as we can tell, whatever we saw that night is what the light of creation is made of. We’ve been calling it Bonds—the chemists hate that, but we got there first. It’s connection at its purest form. The light is a living—well not living, not exactly, but an embodiment of all the interconnectedness of everything, everywhere.” Davenport chuckled. “Streph is strutting like a rooster about this. It’s incredible.”

“If you know what it is, then can you harness it?”

“I think so. That’s where Streph and I come in, trying to make it work.” He furrowed his brow. “We’re close, I think. I don’t think it’s wise to take the power directly out of the light of creation. We don’t want to spend that resource if we don’t have to, it might be finite. But if Bonds are really all around us, then we might be able to harness it from practically nothing.”

“Spinning energy from nothing?” said Lucretia. “That sounds more like magic than engineering.”

“It’s funny, it uses principles from both arcana and physics, but it’s almost neither of those things.” Davenport shook his head in wonder. “It’s something else entirely.”

“Wow.” Lucretia paused again in her writing, marveling. Davenport smiled, and enjoyed the moment of shared awe.

“But here we’ve gone off on a tangent,” he said after a moment. “I’m taking up our last session with technical talk.”

“Incredible technical talk,” said Lucretia, “but I do have a few more questions before we have to say goodbye.”

“Certainly.”

She started a fresh page in each journal. “So, you graduated from the Academy with honors.”

“Tied with Streph, yes.” He chuckled. “That’s one of our favorite arguments, is who was actually fourth in the graduating class.”

Lucretia smiled. “And then you started working for Director Auchenloss.”

“That’s right. She was Professor Auchenloss then, doing research through the Academy.”

“Why did you decide to stay in an academic setting?” she asked. “You could have become rather rich, I imagine, if you’d gone into commercial engineering.”

“I was never interested in money,” he said dismissively. “But besides that, Director Auchenloss was laying the groundwork for IPRE. We’d heard about this new organization that studied the fundamental nature of the universe, right, and it seemed like a thing for physicists and arcanists, not necessarily for engineers.”

“But Director Auchenloss is an engineer by training,” noted Lucretia.

“Exactly. When Streph and I heard she was helping to found it, we basically bothered her until she agreed to take us on as assistants.”

Lucretia laughed. “Fourth in your class, though, I imagine you didn’t have to bother her too much.”

He laughed with her. “At the time it seemed like we did.”

“And you’ve been with IPRE ever since?” 

“Lifelong.” He straightened. “And I’m proud to be a part of it. It was hard, in the lean years, of course, but the science has always been at the center of things, and I have no regrets.”

Lucretia smiled. “Well, I just have one more question for you, then. What’s next? What would you like to accomplish going forward?”

“Ultimately I’d like to see IPRE get its funding back,” he said. “Good science pays for itself, of course, and all that we’ve discovered with the light of creation makes me think we’ll be self-sufficient for quite some time, but eventually we’ll need funding again. It’s difficult to monetize very fundamental science.”

She nodded. “And what about for yourself? What’s next for you?”

Davenport opened his mouth, then closed it again. This was a pretty important question, wasn’t it? He mulled it over for a moment.

“I think next,” he said carefully, “I fly to the stars.”

A slow smile spread across Lucretia’s face. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Davenport smiled back, feeling contented and anticipatory and full. 

“Chase your dreams, Lucretia,” he blurted. “Don’t let anything stop you.”

Still smiling, Lucretia nodded. “Yes sir.”

He sighed, satisfied. “Well. I suppose this is it.”

“So it seems.” Lucretia finished writing, and then returned her quills to their inkwells. “It’s been a privilege and a pleasure to interview you, sir.”

“I’m very glad to have met you,” he said. “I hope this isn’t goodbye.”

“I don’t think it will be, but just in case.” She extended a hand over the table. “I’m very glad to have met you too.”

He shook her hand, smiled and, one last time, hopped down from the chair in the stuffy upper office. “Until next time.”

Davenport made his way out of the room, already thinking about the Bond Engine, about advantageous shapes and placement—

“Sir?”

Davenport paused in the doorway and looked back. Lucretia hesitated.

“I don’t know if this is your specialty or not, but no one yet has been able to tell me…” She bit her lip. “Do you know anything about what happened two days ago? The eyes in the sky?”

Davenport knew what she was talking about. In broad daylight, there had been a moment of blackness, and apparitions of watching eyes. It had been horrible and terrifying, but it was over in a second. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, no.”

“Ah, well, I’m sure we’ll find out.” She closed her journals. “Thank you, sir.”

He nodded. “Goodbye, Lucretia.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of Act 1.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your kind words and kudos! It brings me so much joy to know that the Davenport in my head is as interesting to other people as he is to me. The second half of the fic is incoming, and I hope you enjoy it. Thanks again!


	6. Starblaster Mission 1 Recruitment (interview notes)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the only chapter where I significantly strayed from canon, because I'm told Greg Grimaldis showed up in a recent liveshow? At any rate, he doesn't affect the story very much and also he sucks. Enjoy Act Two of Words on a Page.

Davenport sat at his desk in his and Streph’s office, drafting up a design for a new version of the interplanar ship and very carefully ignoring the stack of files by his elbow. 

Their office was close and cozy, papered in old and new schematics and designs, except where a couple of dusty chalkboards hung, coated in calculations. Their desks faced opposite walls, so the squeaky swivel chairs they used were usually back-to-back, and such was the size of the place that one wrong swivel would lead to a collision. The Institute couldn’t really afford to give them each their own space, but even if they could, Davenport liked this space, liked the proximity to his friend and closest collaborator.

The door opened with a beleaguered creak and Streph entered, plopping down at her own desk. “So. How’s it going?”

“Fine,” said Davenport. This new design was very good, incorporating more space for an even bigger expedition crew. He might even be able to make it more efficient.

“Is that a design for a second _Starblaster_?” asked Streph, leaning back to look over his shoulder.

Davenport groaned. “Please don’t call her that.”

Streph laughed. “The people have spoken, Dav. The first interplanar travel will take place on the _Starblaster_ and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“You’d think people would want something a little more elegant,” he grumbled.

“I don’t know, I kind of like it,” Streph said, with her pointy grin. 

“No accounting for taste,” he muttered.

Streph chuckled. “So. You want to tell me why you’re working on a second Starblaster instead of the one we already have?”

“That one’s finished,” he said vaguely.

“I meant the crew, as I think you know,” she said, swiveling in her seat to look over his shoulder. 

“I’m thinking things over,” he insisted. “I can’t make this kind of choice quickly.”

Streph pressed her lips together. “Don’t you start final preparations in a week?”

“You know there will be delays—”

“Do you really want to be one of them?”

“I won’t be.”

“Have you considered that there’s something else at play here?”

“Just—stop. Stop.” He turned his chair to face her. “Stop asking me questions to try and nudge me into the point you want to make and just say what you want said.”

Streph looked him over carefully. “All right. I think you’re scared to pick a crew, and I can’t figure out why, because just last month you and I were frothing at the mouth for this opportunity. It seems like you don’t want to go anymore.”

“Of course I want to go,” Davenport scoffed. “You think I’m not grateful they chose me?”

“I’m starting to think that, yeah,” said Streph, and her voice had a layer of annoyance. “And look, Dav, I’m trying not to be jealous here, but I can’t help but wonder if that’s the case, why don’t you let someone else go?”

“Like you?” he said, feeling prickly.

“Yeah, like me,” she said sharply. 

Davenport stopped. Gods. She _was_ jealous.

He sighed and put his head in his hand. “I still want to go. I want to go more than anything, you know that. Just like you.”

“But?” Streph prompted.

“But why the hell would they make me captain?” he demanded. “To-to lead the expedition? There are better leaders—why would they choose me and not you? You’re easily as good an engineer, maybe better—”

Streph smirked. “I’m going to quote you on that.”

“Fine! Do!” He wasn’t in the mood for jokes. “To be responsible for a crew though—I didn’t want that! Did you?”

“I wouldn’t have minded it,” said Streph bitterly. “But look—I’m not a pilot, okay? You are. And good one. And a damn fine engineer to boot. And frankly, they chose you to be responsible for a crew because you are a responsible person.”

“But—”

“No buts, you have the best safety record in the institute. There’s a bunch of official documents that say so.” She looked him in the eye. “You’re the best person for the job here, Davenport.”

Davenport didn’t know what to say.

“But if you don’t think you can handle the responsibility…” She shrugged.

He frowned. “No, no, I can handle it. It just isn’t what I thought it was going to be when I signed up.”

“There’s still time to quit,” she offered. “Give someone else a chance.”

Davenport examined her face. “Are you being serious, Streph?”

Streph hesitated. “Maybe a little more serious than I should be.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“You know I’d take you with me if I could,” he said. “Pack you up in my suitcase.”

Streph’s expression softened. “I’ll go on the next one.” She gestured to his diagram. “Looks like there will be plenty of room for an extraneous engineer.”

Davenport smiled, relieved. “Oh yeah, definitely.”

“It looks really good,” she said, her eyes darting over the schematic. She pointed to a fin on the hull. “Except for that, what’s that?”

“It looks good,” he said, shrugging.

“It’s not aerodynamic at all,” she scoffed.

“We don’t know that there’s air to be dynamic in out there,” he pointed out.

She laughed. “That’s fair. Okay, so tell me about your crew. Who are the candidates?”

He heaved a sigh and put down his pencil. “You know I can’t tell you. It’s top secret.”

“Dav, c’mon,” Streph groaned. “I won’t tell anyone. And I’m dying to know.”

“You’ll know as soon as I do,” he said.

“It’d make me feel better about not going,” she offered coaxingly.

“Would it make me feel better about being captain?” he sighed. “I can’t believe they expect me to pick seven qualified candidates—” 

“Six,” Streph said.

Davenport looked up. “No, the crew is seven.”

“Counting you?”

“Ugh.” Davenport winced. “I’m an idiot.”

“No, no this is good, see?” Streph smiled. “I can help you.”

“It’s not allowed—”

“Then just use me as a sounding board.” She folded her hands in her lap. “I promise not to influence you. Please please please please—”

“Gods, all right, all right,” Davenport gave in. It might help him process all this, at least. He reached for the stack of files and put them in his lap. “There are twenty candidates left.”

“How many people applied?” she asked.

“Hundreds,” he sighed. “They rejected most of them outright, and then we did interviews of the last few dozen, and then they whittled it down to twenty and left the rest to me.”

“Are they all academy grads?”

“Mostly, yeah. There are a few exceptions, people who just did the training course.”

Streph’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? Like who?”

Davenport dug through the files in his lap and produced one that was colored green. “Like this guy.”

* * *

“So, Mr. Highchurch,” said Director Auchenloss. She, Davenport, and the Starblaster Program Coordinator, a dwarf named Yotis, sat on one side of the table in the bland conference room. This was the fourth interview out of...how many? Davenport glanced at the box of files beside his chair with some trepidation. More than fifty. It was going to be a long week. He’d been trying not to say much, still uncomfortable with the title of Captain. Better to just shut up and listen for a bit.

“Please, call me Merle,” said the dwarf in the chair across from them. He was unusually short for a dwarf, though still taller than Davenport.

“We’ll keep things professional for now, Mr. Highcurch,” said Yotis, flipping through their copy of his file. They found the page they were looking for and started reading things off. “You have a degree in biology from the University of West Palm Beach, you trained in healing under the very astute Master Tellier, and you were also ordained as a cleric in the order of Pan. Is that correct?”

“All that’s true,” he said, his tone chipper. “I’ve lived a pretty long while. I think I’m older than most of your candidates.”

“Some would call that a disadvantage,” said the Director.

“I prefer to think of it as bringing experience to the table,” he said. “Look at all these kids you’re training to take on this expedition. They’ll need someone to level them out, right? And of the few dozen of us who have gotten this far, I’m one of the only healers, too. I think I’d be an asset.”

“I’m puzzled by the trajectory of your career,” said Yotis. “You seem to have never decided what it is you want to be.”

“I’m a bit of a seeker after truth,” said Merle smoothly. “I’ve sought it through studying, through other people, and through religion. And I’ve come to the conclusion that the real truth is in the journey.” Merle spread his arms wide. “Now I’m ready to go seek truth out beyond this world.”

Davenport was impressed. If this guy decided to proselytize, Davenport might consider following Pan.

“Have you kept up on your scientific learning, Mr. Highchurch?” asked the Director.

“I have, especially botany,” he said, and smiled knowingly. “I’m very fond of plants.”

* * *

“But do you need a biologist?” Streph asked.

“We might,” said Davenport with a shrug. “We don’t know what’s out there. And he is the most qualified healer. We need a medic aboard, whatever we do.”

“Kind of an unconventional candidate,” she said thoughtfully.

“Oh, careful what you say.”

* * *

“I don’t think you understand what’s supposed to be happening here,” the Director told the two elves who refused to sit down, because there was only one chair on the other side of the table. “These interviews are for individuals only.”

“I don’t think _you_ understand,” said the elf called Lup.

“We’re a package deal,” said her twin brother Taako.

“You either accept both of us—”

“Or neither of us.”

“We interview together or not at all.”

“And Director, trust me when I tell you you’ll want to interview us.”

“You realize, of course, that this significantly decreases your chances of being accepted,” said Yotis.

“We’re aware of the consequences,” said Taako airily.

“We don’t care,” said Lup, as intense as her brother was removed. “We’re worth it.”

The Director steepled her fingers, considering. She looked to Davenport. Davenport gave a little shrug. He didn’t mind knocking out two interviews at once. A similar look to Yotis returned a nod.

“Very well.” The Director opened both their files in front of her. “You two were the top graduates in your class, and you finished the coursework a year early.”

“We don’t like to wait around,” said Lup.

“Better to keep things frosty,” added her brother.

“And despite your pacing, you managed to cover a wide variety of subjects,” the Director went on, as if she hadn’t heard them. “Do you two have specializations?”

“Of course,” said Taako.

Lup held out a hand and summoned a fireball. “Evocation.” She tossed it into the air above her head and her brother’s.

Davenport was ready to jump for cover when the fireball came down into Taako’s open hand, but it wasn’t a fireball anymore—it was an apple. “And transmutation,” he finished.

“We’ve pretty much mastered those,” said Lup, her tone blasé.

“Oh but that’s not all, we’re also experts in enchantment—” The apple briefly flashed and turned crystalline.

“In illusion—” said Lup, pointing a finger at the apple. It immediately grew a pair of eyes and split down the middle into a pulpy mouth. 

“In divination.” Taako snapped his fingers, and just as suddenly as it appeared the eyes and mouth vanished, and the apple was normal again.

“And in conjuration,” said Lup, and the apple disappeared from Taako’s hand, and reappeared in Lup’s.

“She is an expert chemist and linguist,” said Taako, plucking the apple from his sister’s hand.

“And he is a skilled artificer and arcanist,” added Lup.

“And did we mention we cook?”

“Because we do. And we’re great at it.”

“So.” Taako set the apple down in front of the Director. 

“Any more questions?” asked Lup.

Yotis was awestruck. The Director seemed to be grasping for something to say. Davenport waited to see if they’d collect themselves, then casually raised a hand.

“Yes, you, the wordless one,” said Taako, pointing.

Davenport straightened up in his chair and folded his hands. “Did you two practice that?”

The twins glanced at each other. Lup said, “Yes,” at the same time that Taako said, “No.”

Davenport smiled as the twins exchanged glares.

* * *

“Oh, no no no, Ari’s told me about them,” said Streph, shaking her head. “That’s a bad idea. They’re trouble.”

“You said you weren’t going to influence me,” Davenport scoffed. 

“Well, sorry, but these two aren’t good with authority of any kind.” She listed off reasons with her fingers. “They were removed from Arcane Fundamentals six times for taking up class time with arguments. They blew up that shed on the west side of campus—”

“That was them?” Davenport interrupted.

“And once they straight up mutinied and took over the kitchens,” she finished. “They don’t listen to anybody.”

“But they really are the best casters in the bunch,” said Davenport. “And furthermore, their magical expertise covers so much ground—I don’t think we can afford not to bring them.”

Streph gave him a look of apprehension.

“All right, and I like them,” he said. “I can’t travel two months with people I don’t like. Like here, this candidate, right?” He handed her a file.

She took it and read the top. “Greg Grimaldis.”

“He’s the only one whose casting ability comes close to theirs, and he looks pretty good on paper, but the fact is that he’s a dick. I don’t want him on my crew. Hell, I don’t want him in the same room as me.”

Streph sighed and gave the file back. “If you’re sure.”

“I’m not, but they’re definitely the top arcane experts.” Davenport paused, pulled out a file. “Except maybe for this one.”

* * * 

“Mr. Bluejeans, would you describe yourself as a lifelong student?” asked the Director.

The nervous human in the chair capitulated for a minute before sputtering, “Y-y-yeah, I uh. I’m kind of just…perpetually interested in everything, a little bit. You know.” He was still a student at the Academy, according to his file, but he had about ten years on the average graduate.

Yotis checked their file. “You have degrees in mundane and planar physics, mathematics, arcane theory and application, and…is this correct? You’re pursuing a custom degree in something called rare arcana?”

“That’s right,” he said. Gods, the man was sweating in rivers.

“Why so many degrees?” asked Yotis.

“Oh, well, I’m interested in the way everything comes together. On an everyday scale, all science is interdisciplinary,” he said. He seemed a little more comfortable talking about science than himself. “You can’t have physics without mathematics, and you can’t have magic without physics. And apparently you can’t have any of that without—is it Bonds?” he looked to Davenport for confirmation. “I just read the recent paper on the subject from your colleague.”

Davenport nodded, impressed. 

“Right.” He was talking only to Davenport now. “So I think we learn more about the world when we examine not just individual aspects, but the entire picture, you know? Just like any relationship, or team. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Davenport smiled.

“I’d like to know a little more about this rare arcana degree,” said the Director.

Barry went nervous again. “Oh, you know. Trying to really scrutinize some lesser known magics. Dig in there real good.”

“Right. Could you specify which ones?”

He hesitated. “Mostly it’s magic disciplines that were considered—superstitiously, I think—gauche or taboo. Understanding stuff that’s not well understood.”

“Such as?” hinted the Director.

“Well…er…” He lowered his voice. “Necromancy. But—but—” he added hurriedly, “I don’t practice it. I do a little magic but I stay pretty well away from that stuff. Only the theory.”

“Necromancy?” Yotis repeated, nonplussed.

“Just a little,” Barry squeaked.

* * *

“So far the candidates you like are an old man, the terror twins, and a necromancer,” sighed Streph.

“He doesn’t practice,” Davenport corrected her.

“Anyone else you want to take on your ship?” she scoffed. “Maybe someone who has no magical aptitude at all but has a really great heart?”

Davenport hesitated.

“Oh my gods, Dav, no.”

* * *

“Mr. Burnsides, would you explain why you applied to this program?” asked Yotis.

“Gladly,” said the beefy human. He was leaning back his chair on two legs, as if this was a casual lunch, completely comfortable with where he was. “This mission is exactly the kind of adventure I’ve been looking for. It’s historic. I want to be in on the ground floor.”

Davenport frowned. Glory-seeking. Not really the attitude he wanted on the crew. A glance toward Yotis and the Director confirmed that they felt similarly.

“You’re not a scientist, Mr. Burnsides, are you?” asked Yotis.

“No,” he said, letting his chair fall to the ground.

“Or an arcanist?”

“No,” said Burnsides, clearly getting annoyed.

“Are you a caster of any kind, Mr. Burnsides?” asked the Director.

He pulled a face. “No, I can’t do magic, but—”

“Then what exactly do you hope to contribute to this scientific mission?”

He leaned forward in his seat, staring at her intensely. “Look, I know I won’t be the brains of this outfit, but I’m not an idiot. I know enough about planar physics to know we have no idea if magic even works out there. What are your scientists and arcanists going to do if they run into trouble they can’t get out of with magic?”

“You want to be the muscle?” said Yotis in disbelief.

“Yeah,” he said, completely sincere. “Someone’s got to protect the crew.”

“And you think that someone should be you?” asked Davenport. He couldn’t help but speak; Burnsides’ aggressive tone was riling him.

Burnsides looked Davenport straight in the eye. “I know it should.”

* * *

“He makes a good point,” Streph muttered. “I didn’t even think of that.”

“None of us had,” said Davenport.

“Huh.” She leaned back in her chair. “All right. So is your cleric any good at abjuration?”

“Yes, that’s one of his specialties.”

“So that’s all eight schools of magic you’ve got covered,” she said, scratching around one of her horns thoughtfully. “You’ve got arcanists who are familiar with both theory and practice, plus artificing. Scientists of pretty much every discipline that might be useful. You’ve got medical and security, and you’re the pilot. And you’ve still got a slot left.” She shrugged. “You’ve pretty much got it made here. I suppose you could always pick up a navigator.”

Davenport folded his hands. “Actually I was considering adding someone a little unusual.”

“Oh, you already did.”

He snorted. “All right, unusual from a field of study perspective.”

“What, are you thinking soft science?”

“More like…liberal arts?”

She gave him a blank look.

He dug out the file on the bottom. “Here.”

Streph looked at the name. “Really?”

* * *

“You may send in the next candidate,” Yotis told yet another starry-eyed Academy grad. She left, and Davenport slumped over the table, enjoying the few seconds before he had to act like a captain again.

“I know it’s been a very long haul,” said the Director, rubbing her eyes. “I appreciate you two taking the time to make sure we’re choosing the right people.”

Yotis sighed expansively. “Well worth the effort.” They reached for the next file. “Oh, look. This is the last one.”

“Really?” said the Director, straightening in her chair. “That’s a mercy.”

There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” Yotis said. 

Davenport shook his head and straightened up. Last one. One more time, and then he could get some sleep—

“Lucretia,” he said in surprise, because Lucretia it was, looking strangely vulnerable without her journals and quills. She smiled a little at Davenport.

“Hello, Captain,” she said quietly, sitting down. “Good afternoon, Director. Coordinator.”

“Afternoon,” said the Director. “Let’s cut right to the chase, shall we? Your application stuck out even among the most unusual of our applicants, and I’m afraid I don’t mean that as a compliment.”

Lucretia stiffened, almost imperceptibly. “How so?”

“Your qualifications are numerous, but not typical of who we were looking for,” said Yotis, flipping through her file. “No science or engineering background. No arcane training. No formal secondary education of any kind. Several publications, although few under your own name.”

“Ghostwriting,” said Lucretia, her voice low.

“Yes, we’re familiar with the practice,” said the Director. “With your particular skillset, how do you expect to contribute to this scientific research mission?”

Lucretia cleared her throat. “I’d like to document the mission. I’m a highly practiced biographer. And I illustrated all of my books myself. I’ve studied drafting and scientific illustration in my spare time.”

“The members of the crew of the _Starblaster_ will be keeping individual lab records on their findings, in addition to the captain’s log,” said Yotis. “We’ll already have documents.”

Lucretia glanced at Davenport. He wished he could smile encouragingly, but that wasn’t very captainly. He settled for a small subtle nod.

She swallowed and looked back to the Director. “With respect, madam, a lab notebook is well enough for a scientific publication, but for a story like this—if you want the story of this mission to be told well—a little outside perspective isn’t just helpful, it’s necessary. Science is useless unless it can be communicated, and the world deserves to know about the most important scientific innovation of our time.”

“Strong words,” said the Director. “How do I know this isn’t just an opportunity for you to publish another book? One that will doubtless be a bestseller.”

“As a member of this crew, I would consider anything I write about it property of the Institute,” she said carefully. “I’ll gladly hand it over for public use.”

“You’d part with your own words so freely?” asked Yotis.

“I’ve done so many times as a ghostwriter, and I’m glad to do it again,” said Lucretia earnestly. “This is a story worth telling.”

* * *

“All right, I see it,” said Streph thoughtfully. “We both know she asks good questions. And she’s plenty sharp.” She nodded, coming around to the idea. “Yeah, she’s exactly who I would choose to write this story.”

That was encouraging. Second-guessing himself about bringing Lucretia aboard had been exhausting. “I’m glad you think so. I thought maybe I was just playing favorites.”

“Isn’t that the point?” asked Streph. “You pick your favorites of the twenty?”

“But there’s no guarantee they’ll work together well, or be a good team, or listen to me,” Davenport protested.

“Well, who else do you have that you like?”

Davenport hesitated. “They’re about it.”

“It sounds to me like you’ve already made up your mind.”

“Maybe so.” He tapped the stack of folders with his fingers.

“So? What’s holding you back?”

He sighed. “Myself. Gods, you’re annoying.”

She grinned. “Happy to help. Why don’t you want to choose?”

“This is my dream, Streph.” He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead. “I want to do it right.”

“You will,” she assured him. “And even if you didn’t, no one would know. There’s no right way to do this yet. It’s never been done.”

“Somehow, not comforting.” He looked back at the stack of files. “All right. You’re right. I just need to choose.”

“You already have.” She turned her chair to face her desk, pulled a notebook off a stack, and flipped it open. “Gods, I wish I could go.”

“Next time you should,” said Davenport sincerely. “And then you can be the captain. Please. I’m begging you.”

She snickered. “If you insist.”

* * *

“Whoever we choose, I want to thank you all for your applications,” said Davenport. 

He stood addressing the last twenty candidates in a small lecture hall at the Academy, where the next leg of mission prep would begin. Twenty hopeful sets of eyes were trained on him. Davenport held the piece of paper with the names he’d chosen in both hands, despite knowing them by heart. 

“If you are chosen, please proceed to that door—” he pointed— “where you’ll meet with IPRE’s head engineer. Now.” He cleared his throat. “The crew of the _Starblaster_ will be…Merle Highchurch.”

The dwarf looked genuinely surprised. He got up slowly, receiving congratulations and slaps on the back from the people around him—well liked by his fellow applicants, it seemed.

“Lup and Taako Tacco,” said Davenport, careful to say the names together.

“Hell YES!” Lup shouted, and both elves jumped to their feet.

“How you like us now?” Taako crowed at the room at large.

“What did I say, Greg, huh?” demanded Lup of the man sitting next to her. “What did I _say_?”

Davenport cleared his throat. Both elves paused, saw the look on his face, and bounded toward the door.

“See you in space, losers!” said Taako, shooting the room finger guns as they disappeared outside.

Davenport took a moment to collect himself and started again. “Barry Bluejeans.”

“Oh gods.” Barry clutched his chest and hauled himself to his feet. “Okay. Okay. Thank you.” He staggered toward the door.

“Magnus Burnsides,” said Davenport.

Magnus rose from his seat with a wide grin, threw back his shoulders, and strutted out of the room.

“And lastly, the biographer Lucretia.”

The wave of disappointment in the room was almost palpable, but Davenport ignored it in favor of the small smile on Lucretia’s face as she rose silently from the crowd and headed for the exit.

He waited for her to leave before addressing the rest of the room. “I know you’re all disappointed. Maybe in yourselves.” He shook his head. “Don’t be. You’re already part of something extraordinary. There will be other missions, other captains. And in the meantime, for making this decision so difficult, I want to say thank you.” He nodded to them, and then left, as Yotis took the floor.

He passed through the doorway and headed down the hall, at the end of which was his crew, waiting with Streph. In a few minutes they’d give the crew a tour of the _Starblaster_ , which meant it was time to stop being just Davenport and start being the captain of this mission. What did a captain even act like? How was he supposed to win their respect?

Magnus was high-fiving everyone as Davenport approached: the enthusiastic Tacco twins; Merle, serene but pleased; Lucretia, who looked as though she was suppressing a cloud of excitement; Barry, dazed, but in a dreamy sort of way; even Streph, who was watching the proceedings with amusement.

“Hey, there he is!” Magnus held out a hand to Davenport for a high five. “What do you say, Cap’n’port?”

Oh dear. A nickname. Not really befitting of a highly respected engineer and the leader of a scientific mission, was it?

But on the other hand…he rather liked the sound of it.

He slapped Magnus’ hand. Magnus lit up in a grin. “Nice!”

“All right,” said Davenport hurriedly, before things got out of control. “You already know who I am, and you’ve all probably met. Get used to each other, because we’ll be stuck together for two months. We’ll need to work together and trust each other. I ask that you start by trusting me. Understand?”

To his surprise, all six of them chorused, “Yes, sir!”

“Thank you.” He nodded curtly. “Time to meet the ship. Streph?”

Streph shot him a familiar smile before giving the crew her pointy-toothed grin. “Right this way.”


	7. Casualties Record (journal #26)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some canon-typical violence in this one--nothing too graphic, but just so you're aware. Take care of yourselves.

Davenport stood watch on the deck with Merle in the early morning.

Cycle 21, day two. The light of creation could fall at any time, so it was important to be watchful, but he was having trouble focusing.

Cycle 20 had been a bad year. They hadn’t found the light, Lup had died, supplies were hard to come by and barely edible, and the only useful water had been loaded with capsaicin. Even this new world, which seemed much easier to live in and at least had fresh water sources, wasn’t lifting his spirits.

Merle seemed to sense his low mood and had remained quiet throughout their watch, playing a slow game of solitaire on the deck table originally designed for mapping and strategy. Davenport kept half an eye on the ship’s instruments and one hand on the spokes of the wheel, and spent the rest of the time watching the stars as they faded in the dawn. Another new set of constellations to learn about, to map and memorize, and to leave behind. Maybe to get devoured.

Why couldn’t he shake this funk? It’d been like this for a while now, a few weeks at least, and he felt it erecting a wall between himself and the crew, but he didn’t know how to make it go away.

He sighed. He was weary, and sleep didn’t seem to help.

The hatch to belowdecks opened, and Barry and Lucretia climbed out. “Morning, Captain, Merle,” Barry said. “We’re here to relieve you.”

“Ah, right.” Davenport pried his hand off the wheel. “Uh, status is still normal. No sign of the light yet.”

“Still haven’t seen any people down there either,” added Merle, cleaning up his card game. “Looks pretty nice though. Tropical.”

“Sounds good,” said Barry. “You want to take the wheel, Lucretia?”

Her eyes went wide. “Really?”

“Yeah, sure,” Barry said. “You ought to learn sometime, right?

“That all right with you, Captain?” asked Merle.

Davenport suppressed a sigh. “Certainly.” She should learn, in case she was the only one left one of these times, he thought gloomily.

“Okay, then,” said Lucretia, nodding a little nervously. “What do I do?”

“Here, I’ll show you.” Barry led her over to the instruments. “Do you know what all these indicate?”

Merle headed down the hatch to belowdecks. Davenport started to follow him, but paused. The rest of the crew would probably be in the galley, and he didn’t feel like talking to people right now, not even in passing on the way to his cabin.

“I know that one’s the altimeter, and that one indicates the angle of the ship,” Lucretia said, pointing to each.

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Barry. “What about this one?”

Davenport turned, crossed the deck, and headed instead to the library.

The original plans assigned this room as an on-deck meeting space, someplace out of the way at the stern of the ship where all seven of them would fit. The ceiling was transparent, for viewing the sky, and bolted to the floor was a table and some comfortable chairs. Since they’d set off, though, the galley’s kitchen table tended to serve the role of meeting place much more naturally, so Lucretia’s journals had taken up residence here, as there were enough of them that they’d started crowding her out of her own cabin. It was always quiet in here, a good place to be alone, and he sorely wanted to be alone.

He climbed into a chair and sighed. There was probably something he should be doing right now, but the weariness was insisting he do nothing. And perhaps he was foolish to let a mood boss him around, but gods, he was just so tired.

Listlessly, his eyes scanned the nearest bookcase. There was a strap across each shelf, to keep books from falling out everywhere in the event of evasive action. They’d installed that after a particularly messy escape. Each one seemed to have a designated number, perhaps the order in which they’d been written? How was Lucretia organizing these?

His gaze snagged on a title. _Casualties Record_.

Why not? Misery loved company. He undid the strap across the shelf and pulled out the journal, opening it to the first page.

“A record of casualties,” read the journal, in Lucretia’s neat handwriting. Davenport flipped to the next page.

“June 23rd. Home plane. Cycle zero.”

* * *

Davenport straightened his uniform jacket and hurried out into the weak sunslight to where the Starblaster was sitting on its launchpad. Gods, there was already a crowd.

The crew would be here soon, which meant he had just a few minutes to say goodbye, if he could find—

“Davimportant!” shouted a voice from right beside the barriers at the bottom of the stage.

Davenport grinned and hopped down the stairs toward the barrier. Uncle Gregor was sticking his nose up to the gap in the fence. A guard seemed to be explaining that he couldn’t come in, and Gregor was ignoring her.

“Oh, let him in, Chelsea,” said Davenport to the guard. “I know him.”

Chelsea gave up her lecture with an exasperated sigh. “Yes sir.” She unhooked one of the fence connectors, and Gregor squeezed through the space.

“My boy!” he shouted, throwing his arms around his nephew.

Davenport hugged him. “I’m so glad you came, Uncle Gray.”

“Couldn’t miss it,” said Gregor, releasing him. “My gods, boy, do you have any idea how proud Mel and Arty would be?”

Davenport held his hand to his breast pocket, where his father’s watch nestled. “I know.”

“And I’m proud of you too,” Gregor assured him. He pointed up at the clouds, which were strange—dark and foreboding, but not altogether blocking out the sunslight. “This weather going to give you any trouble?”

“No, we should be out of here before the rain comes.”

“Everything ship-shape?”

Davenport gave him a lopsided salute. “Aye aye, sir!”

Gregor smiled. He pulled his goggles off his head and offered them to his nephew. “Here, you should take these. For luck.”

“You don’t believe in luck,” scoffed Davenport.

“I didn’t believe you could power a ship with love, either,” he said, nodding his head toward the Starblaster. “There’s more going on in this world than we can possibly imagine. So.” He held out the goggles.

Davenport took them reverently. “I’ll bring them back.”

“Bring yourself, while you’re at it,” Gregor said, winking. “Be safe out there.”

“Yes sir.” Davenport affixed the goggles onto his head.

“Davenport!” called Ari’s voice from behind him. She and Streph approached, hand-in-hand. “Oh, hello, Mr. Gregor!”

“Good morning, ladies,” said Gregor cheerfully. “Fine day to fly to the stars, don’t you think?”

“I’ve seen finer,” said Streph, shooting a glance up at the sky. “I don’t like this cloud cover. Maybe we should delay—”

“It’s going to be fine,” Ari assured her, patting her hand. “You’ve thought of everything, and you have a damn fine pilot.”

“Thank you,” said Davenport. “Have you seen Thwock and Janie?” 

“Janie’s with the press, and Thwock is in the crowd somewhere with his girls,” Ari said.

“You’ll have to wave to them as you’re leaving,” said Streph. “It’s time to go get the crew.”

“Gods, already?” Davenport checked his watch; she was right.

“All right, good luck, Davvy,” said Gregor, slapping him on the back.

“You’re going to do great,” Ari said, patting his shoulder.

“Thank you both.” He spread his arms to Streph. “Get down here.”

She smiled through her nervousness and knelt to give him a hug. “Be safe, all right?”

“We will.” He leaned back to look her in the eye. “Don’t worry about us.”

“Oh, no, I’m worried about the ship,” she said with mock sincerity, and Davenport laughed. She grinned and stood up. “Good luck out there. Now go get the crew!”

“All right!” He ran, back up the stairs, away from his family.

* * * 

Davenport’s hand floated up to the place where the goggles used to sit on his head. He’d lost them in cycle twelve, snapped in half and sunk in deep water.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. Had he called back to his uncle and his friends? Told them he loved them? He couldn’t remember.

* * * 

“What the hell is _that_?” said Merle’s voice.

Davenport frowned, his concentration broken. This was not the time for complications, dammit, they were almost out of the atmosphere.

“That thing’s not a storm, is it?” asked Magnus.

“My gods,” breathed Lucretia.

Davenport looked up. The crew were gathered to one side of the deck, blocking his view, minus Barry, who was at the instruments and shooting panicked glances over his shoulder.

“What is it?” Davenport demanded.

Magnus sidled out of the way, so he could see. Davenport felt his stomach drop.

The storm—but Magnus was right, it wasn’t a storm—was dropping huge…the only word for them was tendrils, massive pillar-like tendrils from the sky, black and shot through with neon colors. They were too far now to see the launchpad as anything other than a bright red dot on the ground, but they were still near enough to see the ant-like scurrying of the gathered crowd as a pillar made landfall directly in the launchpad’s center.

Davenport felt the blood freeze in his veins.

“We—we’re going back, right?” said Barry.

“We have to help!” shouted Magnus, hand on his axe. “We have to save them!”

“Hell no!” said Taako. He threw out a hand to the plane below. “What are we going to do against _that_?”

“We can’t just abandon them,” Magnus shot back.

“No, no, no, we have to get out of here,” murmured Lup, staring as the tendrils spread, coating the ground like a black oil slick. 

“Captain?” said Merle. “What are we doing?”

The crew looked to him. Davenport paused, heart thudding in his chest. He glanced back at the storm. It wasn’t cloud cover, not really; it was more like a huge, sticky amoeba, enveloping the world. He swallowed.

“Barry, prepare to leave the material plane,” he said.

“What?” Magnus demanded. “But Captain, we can’t just run—”

“We are not running,” said Davenport sharply, looking Magnus directly in the eye. “We are regrouping. I don’t know what that thing is or what it’s doing, but I am responsible for the safety of my crew, understand? We’ll come back.”

“We’re coming back to that _thing_ —” said Taako.

“Yes.” Davenport looked at Taako, daring him to challenge the command.

Taako gritted his teeth. “Aye, sir, I guess.”

“Good. Everyone prepare for interplanar travel.”

The crew sat down at the strategy table with varying levels of reluctance, and Davenport grabbed onto the wheel.

“Ready, Captain,” said Barry beside him, hand poised over the lever that take them out of this plane, beyond anything previously seen or discovered.

“Oh my gods, it’s eating the whole planet!” said Lup.

Davenport didn’t dare look. He flipped dials and adjusted the angle of the ship. Focus.

“This can’t be happening,” Barry muttered.

“Now, Barry,” said Davenport, and braced himself. Barry pulled the lever.

Davenport expected a jolt of speed, a displacement in space, but the only thing that happened was the sky faded to gray, and the atmosphere took on the texture of jelly.

The whole world slowed down. Davenport could hear the slow thud of his heart, feel the wheel in his hands. He turned to look at his crew, oozing in slow motion. Their movements were slow as well, each finger and eyelash taking an eternity to get where it was going…and Davenport looked at the back of the ship, at the glowing ring that was the Bond Engine…

And then the world regained its normal speed, and the crew were left staring at each other, looking for explanations none of them had.

“What the hell was that!?” said Lup. “That’s _not_ supposed to happen.”

“We didn’t even leave the material plane!” said Merle, standing and looking over the side of the ship. “It’s still right there!”

“But the storm is gone,” said Magnus hopefully.

“No,” said Lucretia, and her voice was hoarse. “That’s not our plane. The continents are wrong.”

“What are you saying?” demanded Taako.

Barry gulped. “This wasn’t interplanar travel.”

“So what, we hopped dimensions or something?” Taako said.

“How are we supposed to get home?” said Merle.

Lucretia looked at them all in horror. “You saw what happened. What home?”

* * *

“Entire planar system devoured by the Hunger,” the next line in the journal said, matter-of-factly. “Approximate casualties: 1.4 billion.”

Davenport took a shaky breath. Today the grief felt new. Gods. What he wouldn’t give to talk to Streph again, just one more time. He screwed his eyes shut and turned the page.

This wasn’t fair, he thought, for the millionth time. He was angry now, and angry was a little better than weary. He opened his eyes.

“June 30th, ‘The Animal Planet,’ Cycle one.”

* * *

“So then I said, that’s not a basilisk, that’s my wife!” Merle guffawed at his own joke and slapped his knee. 

Davenport stared at the night sky, unresponsive.

Merle wiped away a mirthful tear in the silence. “Cap’n’port?” he said after a while. “You okay, buddy?”

“Hmm?” Davenport blinked a couple times. “Sorry. What?”

“Eh, don’t worry about it,” said Merle generously, scraping up the last bite of beans from his plate. The two of them had been camping out for a couple days now, looking for the light of creation. “What’s on your mind?”

Davenport gestured to the sky. “Do you think the animals have names for the constellations?”

“Don’t know. You’d have to ask them.” Merle put his plate down beside the fire. “Although you should probably ask Barry to translate for you. Last time I had a question, Taako and Lup had a whole tree full of chipmunks laughing at me.”

Davenport attempted a smile, which didn’t quite work, and they fell into silence again.

“What else are you thinking about?” asked Merle after a minute.

“Are you the ship’s counselor now too?” asked Davenport, more snappishly than he meant to.

“I think morale falls under my purview,” said Merle with a shrug. “More or less.”

Davenport flexed his jaw, considering. Merle waited.

“The mission should be over by now,” Davenport said finally. “We should be on our way home.”

“We should,” Merle agreed.

“It’s not—ugh.” Davenport glowered into the fire, fists clenching. “It’s not fair, dammit.”

Merle nodded, sobered.

“And I knew this could go horribly wrong when I signed up!” said Davenport, standing up. “There was risk. Of course. But it was supposed to be _my_ risk. Our risk, I guess. _We_ were supposed to die, and then everyone else would live and the work would go on and—” Davenport found himself looking for something to punch. He forced himself to uncurl his fingers and sat back down.

“And?” Merle prompted.

“And it’s not fair.”

“Life’s not fair, usually,” Merle intoned.

“Well it damn well should be.” He put his chin in his hand and huffed.

They sat in silence for a moment or two.

“Well,” said Merle. “What’s the plan?”

Davenport looked up. “For tomorrow?”

“For life.” Merle spread an arm out grandly. “Since it’s not fair, but it should be. You going to let it make you bitter?”

“It’s a little late for that,” grumbled Davenport. “Why are we even here? What’s finding the light again going to accomplish?”

“Don’t know,” said Merle. “Maybe nothing. But it’s about the only lead we’ve got.”

“I suppose so,” Davenport muttered. 

“Maybe we can use it somehow,” Merle offered.

Davenport didn’t reply.

“Why’d you come, Captain? If you’re not sure what we’re trying to accomplish?” asked Merle.

Davenport took a deep breath and looked at his medic. “You want me to be honest with you, Merle?”

“Always.”

He let his head fall back so he was looking at the stars again. “I needed to get away from the crew for a while. Constantly being captain just…I never wanted this.” He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, Merle.”

“The hell for?”

“For sticking you all with a captain whose first response to trouble is to sulk,” Davenport sighed.

“I wouldn’t say it’s your first response.”

Davenport opened his eyes and shot Merle a look of disbelief. Merle was frowning, thoughtfully.

“No, your first response is always what’s in our best interest.” He was nodding now. “In fact—I didn’t even know you were angry, really, until now. You’re pretty good at hiding it.”

Davenport shrugged.

“Why bottle it all up, though?”

“I don’t.” He shook his head. “I use it. Throw it into work.”

“Couldn’t hurt to beat the shit out of a punching bag or something,” Merle suggested.

“Striking out in anger is a bad habit to get into.”

“See, you hear that wisdom?” said Merle, patting Davenport on the shoulder. “You may not have wanted to be a captain, but you’re pretty good at it.”

Davenport felt some of the tension leave his frame. “If you say so.”

“I know so.” Merle leaned back to look at the stars again. “And hey, I don’t know where we’re going either. The important thing is that we keep going.”

Merle looked so hopeful. Davenport sighed and joined him, looking at the sky.

After a minute or two, he snorted. Merle looked at him in surprise.

“I just—” the sentence dissolved into snickers. “I just got the joke.”

Merle lit up in a smile.

* * *

“Planar system devoured by the Hunger,” the journal said. “Approximate casualties: upwards of ten million sentient animals, and Magnus Burnsides, who was killed by the Hunger in the escape attempt.”

* * *

“Get on the ship, get on the ship!” Taako was shouting, one hand holding his hat on his head, the other hauling Lucretia onto the deck. Lup was beside him, taking potshots at the Hunger with blasts of fire and electricity and acid. Davenport was next, scrambling up the gangplank after Lucretia.

“Start the engine, Taako!” Davenport shouted, turning to give Barry a hand. Barry was dragging a leg behind him, limping badly, face pale. Davenport braced himself against the ship’s rail and pulled Barry’s arm as hard as he could.

To his left, the bond engine began to spin, and the _Starblaster_ hummed to life. Barry made it on deck and crawled off to one side, and Davenport reached out to help Merle.

“Where’s Magnus?” shouted Lup. She extended a finger to the sky, and a bolt of electricity arced into the clouds that were the Hunger, like lightning in reverse. The Hunger shrank back, but just barely.

“He’s behind me,” gasped Merle as Davenport pulled him up. 

Davenport glanced down the gangplank. A few leaping deer, a panicked monkey, a tendril of the hunger that was spreading too close for comfort, but Magnus was nowhere to be seen.

As soon as Merle was on deck, Davenport bolted for the wheel, flipping switches and turning dials, and steered the _Starblaster_ airborne. “Does anyone see him?”

“He was helping some ducklings!” said Lucretia, looking frantically over the side of the ship. “He was just there!”

“We’ll find him,” Davenport said, teeth gritted, his eyes darting to find a route a way through the smashing arms of the Hunger. “Clear me a path!”

“Aye captain!” said Lup, possibly too enthusiastically. She dove toward the prow of the ship, and Taako and Merle followed, and before their strikes of radiance and energy and fire, the blackness parted like split wood. 

“C’mon, buddy, let’s do this,” Davenport mumbled to the ship, and punched the accelerator.

Surrounding them on every side, the sounds of animals in distress, the crumbling of their primitive structures, and the oily black girth of the Hunger’s tendrils—Davenport weaved through it all, dodging with finesse that exhilarated him even as it terrified him. He hadn’t been aware the _Starblaster_ knew these moves. Gods, he loved this ship.

No sign of Magnus. The Hunger began to become less of an obstacle course and more of a massive, unbreachable wall before the _Starblaster_. A tendril came down directly in front of them, and Davenport veered to one side, spinning a little. There was hardly any open sky left to be seen, and they weren’t going to make it if they didn’t get out _now_. He chose a single patch of blue and went for it.

“Lucretia!” he called over one shoulder. “I need you to pull the lever!”

“We can’t leave Magnus,” she said. He glanced at her; her hands were clasped before her, pleading. “We can’t!”

Davenport’s gut roiled, because she was right, but what could he do? “He made his choice! Are you going to respect that, or let us all get killed?”

Lucretia’s face crumpled, but she hurried toward the controls and put her hand on the lever.

“Ready?” Davenport gunned it, and the _Starblaster_ sang beneath his feet and in his hands. Almost…almost…

“Now!”

Tears streaming down her face, Lucretia pulled the lever.

Again, the sky faded to gray, and again, time went gelatinous. Davenport turned to look at Barry, and when his eyes eventually made their long journey around his skull he saw the man hanging onto the deck rail for dear life.

And then, like a spool cut with a knife, threads of light flew from bond engine, snaking through the air. They surrounded Barry, and then himself and Lucretia, until they were all cocooned in white light.

For a split second, everything was white and still and silent.

And the threads unraveled, and it wasn’t Lucretia next to him, but Barry, because Lucretia was at the table with Lup and Merle and Taako—and Magnus, whole and wide-eyed. Time went back to normal.

For a moment, no one said anything.

“What,” pronounced Magnus carefully, “the fuck.”

“Your eye,” said Lucretia.

Magnus brought a hand up to a bruise that had been gone for months and winced. “W—I died, right?”

“How’s your leg, Barold?” asked Lup.

Barry looked down and rolled his foot. “I don’t—I swear I broke my ankle down there.”

“Not down there, my dear nerd,” said Taako, standing up to look over the side. “This is someplace else.”

“It’s not home?” said Merle, looking as well. 

“You’ve got that cut on your forehead, old man,” said Taako.

Merle’s hand floated to his brow. “What the hell is going on?”

“Did it look bigger?” said Lucretia, with a layer of panic to her voice. “Did that thing look bigger to anyone else?”

“So are we like, immortal now?” said Lup, with a manic smile.

“But I died?” said Magnus, still perplexed.

“Stop, everyone—gods, stop. Hold on.” Davenport held up his hands. 

The crew fell silent. He took a deep breath. His hands were shaking. He clenched them into fists.

“So the bond engine runs on connection, and somehow, between the interdimensional travel and the bond engine, we’ve been…I don’t know, cemented into this spot. So yes, we have seemed to find some kind of…” he frowned at the deck... “death loophole. But I swear to every god, if you start using that as an excuse to act foolish then I’ll confine you all to quarters, understand?”

He glared at them until they all mumbled or nodded an affirmation.

“Good.” He took another breath. “There’s a lot here we don’t understand.”

“Damn right there is!” said Taako.

“Why could we fly away now but not when we first got to the last plane?” asked Barry.

“How come, if I died and came back, I remember all last year?” wondered Magnus.

“Is time actually slowing down when we leave a planar system, or is it just some weird transitional pocket jelly dimension?” said Lup, waving her fingers.

“Did that horrible thing seem bigger or not?” pleaded Lucretia.

“Quiet! Please!” said Davenport. He rubbed his forehead. “Listen, I don’t know. But this is the second time that the light of creation has appeared and that thing has followed a year after. And I think…” He glanced at Merle. “I think we need to follow the light.”

Merle nodded encouragingly.

“So. Magnus.” Davenport straightened up. “How do you feel?”

“Really good, for a dead guy,” he quipped. Lup chuckled.

“Good. Then you and Lup are going to be our scouting party, as soon as we find a place to land. In the meantime, I want you to assess the state of the ship—Barry, give them a hand—and I want an inventory. Did our stuff come back too?”

“Aye, Cap’n’port,” said Magnus, hopping up immediately.

“Taako and Merle, I want you looking for a place to set down,” he said, as Lup, Barry, and Magnus disappeared belowdecks. “We should give the _Starblaster_ a break.”

“You got it, Cap,” said Taako, already leaning over the side. “Holy shit, I think I see civilization.”

“Really? Where?” Merle stood beside him at the rail.

“And Lucretia?”

She was sitting stock-still, wild-eyed. She turned her head, but otherwise didn’t move.

“Would you join me over here?”

She stood slowly. He waited for her, easing the ship lower in the new planet’s atmosphere, slowly.

“Are you all right?” he said as soon as she was beside him, keeping his voice low.

Her lip trembled. “I—my journals. I left one back in the Royal Beasts’ throne room—” She stopped.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You can rewrite most of it. I know you have a good memory.”

She nodded, grimacing.

“You need some rest, I think,” he said quietly.

“No, no, I’d like to help,” she insisted.

“If you want to help, you’ll get ready to talk to whoever lives down there,” he answered. “I’ll need someone a little more diplomatic than these yahoos.” He gestured to Merle and Taako.

Lucretia smiled damply.

Davenport smiled back, and gently took hold of her arm. “You’re alive, and you made it. We all are. It’s going to be all right.”

“But all those animals,” she protested. “It’s not fair.”

Ah, a familiar line. Davenport let go of her arm and said the only thing that he could think to say. “No. It’s not. But we’ve got to keep going. All right?”

She nodded.

“Now go get some rest. That’s an order.”

She nodded again, and then climbed belowdecks.

“Hey, Cap’n’port?” called Taako. “It’s mostly forest right underneath us. Can we fly somewhere more open?”

“On it,” said Davenport, and steered onward. He tried not to sag against the wheel. Time to do this all over again.

* * *

Davenport flipped through the next few pages. The second and third cycles, they’d tried to bring people on board the _Starblaster_ , and both times they had to watch them dissolve into nothingness as their own bodies reset. Davenport had been against it from the beginning, but he didn’t feel their loss any less poignantly. They’d given up on trying to save people since then, except by finding the light before the Hunger did.

Fourth cycle, they got the light, but Merle died. Fifth cycle, no light, a small civilization of a few hundred very tall thin people devoured. Sixth cycle, no light, Taako dead early in the year, Lup devastated, fifty thousand devoured. Seventh cycle, Barry dead. Eighth cycle, Magnus again, that unfortunate business with the mushroom spores. Merle, then Lup, then Barry, then Magnus a third time, Lucretia—that had been a particularly awful year, with each of them blaming themselves, plus a few hundred million people devoured, and then there was cycle seventeen, when only Lup’s compassion stopped them from becoming just as destructive as the Hunger—

He flipped another page and paused.

“September 1st, ‘Cave Geeks,’ Cycle 19. Captain Davenport, killed in negotiations by Chief Tura.”

* * *

“I can take them all out,” said Magnus through clenched teeth, axe raised. “Just say the word.”

“Don’t move,” hissed Davenport, his hands in the air. “That’s an order.”

The camp was surrounded. Luckily, most of the crew was off doing reconnaissance—this plane had a strange magnetic field that messed with their instruments, but they knew the light was close by—but that meant that Lucretia, Magnus, and Davenport were alone with the _Starblaster_ with no less than thirty spears pointed at them by pre-bronze age elves half-crazed with hunger.

“You must leave this place immediately,” shouted the one Davenport knew to be called Tura. “Your temple is bringing bad luck upon this place!”

“Your mother the chief gave us permission to land our—” Davenport grimaced— “temple here. We were told we could stay for five days.”

“The chief is dead,” spat Tura, brandishing her spear more fiercely, directly pointed at Davenport’s navel. “You, little man, speak falsehoods about her.”

Little man indeed. Davenport sincerely wished he’d kept just one of the twins, just one person who could do some really impressive magic. If only he’d kept up on illusions—he could probably do a loud noise or a bright light, but not both—

“Actually, if you’d like to see—I wrote down—” Lucretia began, reaching for the journal she’d been forced to drop onto the ground.

“We have no use for your so-called talking box, either, round-ears,” said Tura, as one of her warriors brought a spear closer to Lucretia’s face. “You will leave this place at once or you will be killed.”

Davenport suppressed a sigh and took a careful step forward. “Surely we can come to some arrangement—”

“No arrangements!” she cried, and quicker than he could dodge—quicker than he could _see_ —she thrust her spear into his abdomen with a _thuck_.

He froze in shock, tried to take a breath, but he couldn’t—she yanked the spear back out, and everything went black.

* * *

Davenport gasped as the world went white, and then his vision cleared, and he was holding onto the wheel on the _Starblaster_. He clutched at the place where the spear had gone through his torso, but there was no sign of a hole.

“You’re back!” Magnus jumped to his feet and lifted Davenport bodily in a hug. “Thank _god_.”

“Magnus, put me down!” Davenport said, struggling in his grasp.

“No way, Cap’n’port, sorry,” said Magnus, squeezing him just shy of tight enough to injure. The others were gathering around now too, and the rest of the crew actually joined the hug. Even Taako patted him on the back from afar.

“We took turns being captain,” said Barry. “It was _terrible_.”

“Hey speak for yourself,” scoffed Taako. “I was a pretty good captain.”

“No,” said Lup.

“Not really,” muttered Merle.

“Hey!”

“You were missed,” whispered Lucretia.

Perhaps it was a combination of the words and the hug—gods, when was the last time he’d hugged anyone?—but Davenport felt tears spring to his eyes. He cleared his throat. “Well. Thank you. Now come on, let go, all of you.”

They spread out again, and Magnus placed him gently on the deck. Davenport straightened his jacket. “Did you find the light?”

“Yeah, but not before the Hunger got Barry,” said Taako, snickering. “He tripped.”

“It was fine, really,” shrugged Barry.

“Lup had to fight Chief Tura,” added Merle.

“And then _I_ was chief of the cave elves,” she cackled.

“Wait, then, if Barry and I both died, who piloted the ship?” asked Davenport.

Magnus pointed both his thumbs at himself. “This guy. I’m a pretty good driver.”

“Pilot,” Davenport corrected him.

“You were an _adequate_ driver,” said Taako acerbically.

“Hey, just because you drive like a five hundred-year-old blind grandma—” Magnus began.

“Enough,” said Davenport wearily. “Anyone need some rest?”

No one spoke up.

“Then the usual protocol. Hop to it.”

The crew scrambled to do inventory and scouting, but Merle paused beside him. “Do _you_ need some rest?” he asked quietly.

Davenport shook his head. “I’ve been dead for months, I’ll be fine.”

“All right.” Merle patted his shoulder. “It’s good to have you back.”

For the briefest moment, Davenport missed the hug, but he swallowed that feeling. “Good to be back.”

* * *

Davenport pushed the journal away, put his head down on the table, and wept. He had been playing the stoic captain for too long, and it was too much in the face of so much tragedy, and dammit, he needed a hug. Gods, how he needed a hug. He was just so godsdamn tired…

His weeping subsided before too long. He sniffled, letting the last few shudders squeeze out any residual tears before locating his handkerchief in one of his pockets.

This crew had been together twenty years. They weren’t just a crew, or friends anymore, they were family, a family he’d chosen himself. And they could do fine without him, sure, but they wanted him, and to some extent needed him.

He needed them, too.

Davenport shut the journal and put it back, careful to reattach the strap on the bookcase, and then tried to put his mustache in some kind of order. Maybe he should just shave it off this cycle. That’d throw everyone for a loop. The thought made him chuckle, a hiccupping sort of chuckle. He wiped away a couple more renegade tears and replaced his handkerchief.

Right. No more sulking, not today. If he needed his crew, he should go and find them. Maybe he should talk to Merle; Merle always had a good word to make him feel better. 

Davenport left the library, but paused as he walked out on deck. Lucretia was sitting at the table, listening intently to Barry, who cleared his throat.

“Right. Er. I wrote this…four or five days ago, I’m not sure.”

“What’s the meter?” Lucretia asked.

“Uh. Freeform, I guess.” Barry blushed. “Here goes.” He cleared his throat again, and said,

“A presence so electrifying,  
Dazzling, resplendent,  
That the absence leaves me grasping for  
Bare shreds of residual light.”

Davenport was transfixed. Poetry. Pretty poor poetry, maybe, but he didn’t know Barry had it in him.

“I quite like that,” said Lucretia. “Lovely word choice. Who’s it about?”

“Oh, no one,” he said, blushing again. “Uh, it’s your turn.”

“All right.” She stood up, and Barry took her place at the table. “I’ve written a haiku about the end of a cycle.”

Barry nodded for her to start, and Lucretia recited,

“Bond engine glows bright  
And like flowers after rain  
Family, returns.”

Barry sighed. “That’s beautiful.”

She smiled.

Davenport meandered up to the table, as quietly as he could manage, and said, “This is the strangest pilot training I’ve ever seen.”

Barry jumped and turned scarlet. “I—I—”

“We were sidetracked,” Lucretia jumped in, her voice even. 

“By poetry?” asked Davenport.

Barry buried his face in his hands. “It’s just a thing we do when we’re on watch together,” he groaned.

Davenport suppressed a smile. “I don’t see the problem. You’ve got to do something on these long watches.”

“Would you like to join us, Cap’n’port?” asked Lucretia. “Our only rule is that if you listen to poetry, you also have to recite some.” 

Davenport pretended to consider this. “So if I were to say, just for example… ‘There was a young man from Lintinner—‘”

Lucretia loosed a shocked giggle and slapped her hand over her mouth. Davenport grinned.

Barry looked between the two of them. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s a…humorous limerick,” said Lucretia, through barely suppressed laughter.

It took Barry a minute before a scandalized look crossed his face. “Captain!”

“I didn’t know you were a poetry fan,” snickered Lucretia.

“Ah, get me drunk sometime,” said Davenport, waving a dismissive hand and heading toward the hatch belowdecks. “I’ll leave you to it.”

He climbed down the ladder into the galley, which served as kitchen, living room, and hallway to the lab and cabins. Lup and Magnus were seated at the table with wineglasses in front of them, both of them red-faced, eyes streaming. Taako was pouring them a glass of something clear and tinged slightly yellow from a pitcher. Davenport paused to watch.

“All right! Round five!” said Taako. “Ready…drink!”

Lup and Magnus threw back their glasses and chugged, finishing at about the same time. Lup stuck out her tongue and fanned her face. “Gah!”

“My face is numb,” said Magnus thickly, poking his cheek. “Is that normal?”

Oh gods. “That’s not the water from the last cycle, is it?” Davenport asked, already well aware that the answer was yes.

“Sure is, Cap’n’port,” said Taako gleefully. “We had to get rid of it somehow.”

“My entire head is on fire,” wheezed Lup.

“You giving up?” said Magus, poking her arm.

“Hell no!”

“Why, though?” asked Davenport.

“Cuz she said,” said Magnus, poking her again, “that I couldn’t handle it.”

“I never said that,” said Lup. “ _You_ said I couldn’t match you!”

“Did not!”

“Yes you did, you said—” Lup paused. She turned her bloodshot gaze to Taako. “Oh, I see what’s happening here.”

“What is?” said Magnus.

“You,” said Lup, shoving her finger in Taako’s chest. “You tricked us, didn’t you?”

“Puh-lease,” Taako schmoozed. “I don’t have any idea what you’re—” he snapped his fingers and vanished.

“Hey!” Lup jumped to her feet. “You Blink your ass back here!”

Davenport laughed. Magnus leaned back in his chair, grinning. “So does this mean I win?”

Lup narrowed her eyes at him. Davenport watched with interest.

“Pour the glass,” she said finally, thumping back into her seat.

Davenport smiled and shook his head, passing through the galley toward the lab. Behind him, Magnus said, “I’m kind of getting used to this flavor.”

The lab was a peaceful place, despite being in a constant state of chaotic clutter. Lucretia had carved out a small section of order in one corner for a bookbinding operation, but the rest of the tables and desks were covered in machine parts, gears, clockwork, artificing materials, spell components, a complex distillation setup, chalkboards covered in the latest ideas on interdimensional travel and the Hunger and the bond engine, and at one end, Merle’s collection of plants. Merle was there, as Davenport figured he would be, watering a plant they’d picked up a couple of cycles ago that was very good at treating chemical burns.

“You’ll probably need some of that, in a while,” said Davenport. Merle looked up, and Davenport gestured over his shoulder. “Lup and Magnus are at it again.”

Merle chuckled. “They’re going to give themselves nerve damage.”

Davenport inspected the plant, which was waxy and spiky. “It’s still going strong, huh?”

“Yep,” said Merle, watering a leafy vine next to it. “If I can figure out how to propagate it, we should be set for a good long while.”

“Mm.” Davenport nodded thoughtfully, focusing on the plant to distract himself from thinking too hard about what Merle meant by propagation.

“So.” Merle pinched a dead leaf off the vine and inspected it. “You ready to talk about what’s got you feeling so down?”

Davenport leaned against a desk, careful not to jostle whatever new apparatus Barry and Lup were working on. “I’m just that transparent, am I?”

“No, I don’t think anyone else noticed,” said Merle, squinting at the leaf. He brought it over to a microscope to inspect.

“Good,” Davenport sighed. “I’d hate for the crew to see me losing it.”

Merle adjusted the knobs on the microscope. “So you’re losing it, then.”

Davenport paused. Well. Not far off. “I’m…I’m tired, Merle. I’m so tired.”

“You need more rest?” asked Merle.

“It doesn’t help.” Davenport rubbed his temples. “Aren’t you sick of doing the same things over and over? Of…of chasing the light, of surviving year to year? What’s the point? How long can we keep doing this?”

“Every time we find the light, we save lives,” said Merle, looking up from the microscope.

“And every time we don’t?” said Davenport. “People die, and we have to walk away and start all over again.” The weariness was creeping back, and this time it had teamed up with the anger to make his gut roil. He rested his head in his hands. “It’s tedious and macabre, and I’m sick of it. I’m tired.”

Merle looked at him sympathetically. “You _are_ losing it.”

Davenport glared at the ground. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“I think you should tell the crew.”

He looked up sharply. “What?”

Merle held the leaf up to the vine and mumbled something. There was a brief sound like wind chimes, and the leaf melded itself back on the vine and turned green again. “You should tell them what you’re going through.”

“What—no! No.” Davenport gritted his teeth. “That’s idiotic. No.”

“They deserve to know if their captain is losing hope,” said Merle, inspecting the reattached leaf. “Maybe they can give you a break.”

“I don’t need a break.”

Merle shot him a skeptical look.

“I’m just tired!” Davenport sputtered. “Aren’t we all?”

“Not all of us have been trying to carry the whole mission on our shoulders,” said Merle, crossing his arms. “You don’t accept help, Davenport.”

“I came to you, didn’t I?” he snapped.

“Yeah, and like always, you were hoping for some pithy phrase to lift your spirits.” Merle raised his eyebrows, daring Davenport to disagree. “I might be a cleric, but I’m no motivational speaker. Faith isn’t a vending machine, and I can’t keep putting a band-aid on a sucking chest wound.”

Davenport’s hands curled into fists. He forced them flat again. Do not strike out in anger.

“You think,” he said through clenched teeth, “that this is a bigger problem than just a bad mood.”

“I do,” said Merle gravely. “And I think it’s only going to get worse if you don’t quit being so damn insecure.”

The word hit him like a slap. “Insecure?” Davenport demanded, outraged. “I am not—”

“Yes you are,” Merle interrupted him. “You think if you show weakness we’ll stop respecting you.”

“W-w—won’t you, though?” Davenport snapped.

“Hell no!” said Merle. “We’re family, Davenport! You’re our captain! That’s never going to change.”

“But I’m in charge!” Davenport shouted. “I chose you, I brought you all out here, and it’s my fault you’re trapped in this perpetual survival cycle! I can’t be weak. You need strength!”

“You’re not as strong as we all are together,” said Merle, his tone infuriatingly level. “And we can’t work together if you insist on being a maverick because you’re afraid of what we’ll think of you.”

Davenport looked away, staring daggers into space. He flexed his jaw. “I never wanted this. I didn’t want to be captain.”

“Too bad, Cap’n’port, you are one.”

Davenport turned his glare back to Merle, but Merle ignored it and went on, “But you don’t have to do it alone. In fact,” Merle put a hand on his shoulder, “trying to do that is killing you.”

Davenport pulled his shoulder out of Merle’s grasp. “So what? I’ll just come back.”

“Oh, cut the shit,” Merle scoffed. “The first order you gave us in cycle two was that if we use our effective immortality to act like idiots, we’d be confined to quarters. You think you’re immune to that?”

“You think I need to be confined to quarters?” Davenport snarled.

“I think you’re being a dumbass, thinking you’re alone.”

“I think you are a useless, self-righteous wannabe philosopher,” Davenport spat.

Merle froze.

Damn. Damn, _damn_. All the rage was sucked out of Davenport instantly, replaced by regret. Damn! He closed his eyes. “I’m—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry.”

“Is that really how you feel?” asked Merle quietly.

“No.” Davenport looked back at him. “I didn’t mean it. I swear I didn’t.”

Merle nodded slowly. He wouldn’t look at Davenport.

Davenport raked a hand through his hair. What kind of a captain took his anger out on his crew? What kind of _person_ said those kinds of things to a friend? He _was_ losing it. 

He turned on his heel and headed toward the door.

But the door opened abruptly to reveal Barry. “Oh, captain, there you are.”

Davenport swallowed and straightened up. “Yes?”

“We saw the light fall,” said Barry. “And it’s not even very far. Lup’s triangulating now.”

“Oh. Good.”

Barry smiled, and turned to leave. Without a backward glance at Merle, Davenport followed.

They headed up onto the deck. Magnus, Lucretia, and Lup were already there, Lup leaning over the instruments with a look of concentration, holding an ice cube to her tongue. Magnus and Lucretia were looking over the side at the water, which was a rather pretty aquamarine. Magnus still had a wineglass of contaminated water.

“It’s beautiful,” Lucretia was saying. “Look at the beach!”

Davenport heard Merle come up the hatch behind him. He ignored him for now, approached Lup. “How far is the light?”

“Jutht uph the coatht,” she said around the ice cube. “We can plabably geth ith thoday.”

“I love a good beach,” said Merle, who was now beside Lucretia.

“Really, it’s that close?” said Davenport.

Lup removed the ice cube for moment. “Yeah. Easy stuff.” She winked at Barry. “Next time give me something hard.”

Barry cleared his throat nervously. “Y-ye-sure. Right.”

“Guess it’s time to get to work,” sighed Magnus, pouring out his glass over the side of the ship.

Davenport saw their faces fall, felt the collective mood go sour. He threw a glance at Merle, who was staring longingly over the side of the ship at the beach.

“No,” Davenport said.

His crew looked at him in surprise.

Davenport sighed. All right. Bite the bullet, or else things would only get worse. “Look, I…Taako, can you come out here?”

Taako appeared out of thin air, sitting on the table. “’Sup?”

“Right.” He drew himself to his full height, and then gave up on that, because it wasn’t helping him feel less small. “I’m worn down, everyone. Worn to the bone. And I need…I need a break. And probably a hug.”

He expected confusion, or disappointment, or something. The sympathy and concern he was greeted with was almost worse. He swallowed and looked at his feet, feeling the shame wash over him. “I’m sorry, gang. The last thing I want is to let you down.”

“You need…what, a break from being captain?” asked Taako. “What are you saying?”

“Yes, I…” An idea popped into his head. “Maybe…maybe it could be a break for all of us?” he said thoughtfully. “I can’t be the only one. This place is uninhabited, as far as we can tell, and—and it’s beautiful, and if the light really is this easy to get—”

“You’re saying…you’re saying we’re on vacation?” said Magnus slowly.

Davenport breathed a sigh of relief. “If that’s agreeable. I think we could all use a year off.”

“Um, hell yes?” said Taako, jumping to his feet. “I’m gonna need you all to start referring to me as Island Boy, effective _now_. Lup?”

“I am five hundred steps ahead of you,” said Lup, waving a hand, and suddenly her uniform robes were a bathing suit, sarong, and sunhat.

“I saw a very good place for a shelter a while ago,” said Lucretia, furiously scribbling in her journal.

“We could build a beach house!” Merle suggested.

“Oh, that’d be neat,” said Barry.

“Let’s celebrate with a glass of spicy water!” Magnus declared.

“Magnus, why do you keep drinking that stuff?” said Lup.

Magnus grimaced. “I can’t stop. Please help.”

Davenport laughed. “All right, all right, let’s recover the light and then it’s island time. Lup and Barry, you’ve got navigation?”

“That’s right,” said Lup, waving a hand at Barry, whose jacket and jeans turned into swim trunks and a linen shirt. She surveyed him thoughtfully. “What do you think?”

“Uhh…” Barry pointed to himself, and the swim trunks turned into cutoff denim shorts. 

Lup smiled. “Nice. Let’s go.”

“Shall we warm up your robot arm, big guy?” Taako asked Magnus, cracking his knuckles. “We might need to go fishing for the light.”

“Yeah, let’s do it,” said Magnus, and they disappeared belowdecks.

Davenport wandered to the side of the ship and leaned against the rail, watching Lucretia writing in her journal and Barry and Lup at the ship’s controls. He was still tired, still angry. But at least it didn’t feel so overwhelming anymore. 

Merle approached him. Davenport eyed him warily, but nothing in Merle’s demeanor suggested he was upset. 

“I am sorry,” said Davenport.

Merle nodded and leaned beside him. “It’s all forgiven. You did good, Captain.”

“Thank you,” said Davenport quietly. “For everything.”

“No problem, buddy.”

Davenport straightened up, chin raised. “From now on, just call me ‘Beach’n’port.’” He paused. “Oh, gods, never mind, don’t call me that.”

Merle laughed. “How about that hug you needed, huh?”

“Did I say that out loud?” said Davenport with a wince.

Merle threw his arms around him. Davenport stiffened automatically; he forced his spine to relax, let loose a shaky breath, and let his own arms settle around Merle.

“Don’t let it get this bad again, all right?” Merle said over his shoulder. “You’re right, we need you, but we need the you who needs us too.”

Davenport chuckled a little. “Pithy.”

“I’m serious, captain.”

Davenport squeezed his eyes shut. “Okay.”

Merle let him go after a minute and patted him on the back. “You gonna be all right?”

“We’ll see.” Davenport squared his shoulders, feeling like a weight had been lifted. “Either way, we keep going.”

Merle nodded approvingly. The two of them leaned back against the rail.

“I better start thinking about what kind of shelter we should build on the beach,” said Davenport after a while.

“I thought you were taking a break.”

“Are you kidding? You know the last time I got to build something?” Davenport rubbed his hands together. “This is gonna be good.”


	8. Captain's Log, Starblaster

_“Davenport. Your even temperament has been sullied with rage and denial over the difficulties you have faced during your journey here. Your past sin is wrath. How do you plead?”_

_“Have we not…earned a little wrath?”_

* * *

Davenport sat in the sun on the deck of the _Starblaster_. He and Merle were playing cards, but Merle had gone off to get them some tea, so Davenport was taking advantage of the quiet, writing in his log. He’d been slack on writing in it after the fifth year or so—after all, who was going to read it? But occasionally it was helpful to process through things he wasn’t quite ready to talk about with the others. He’d picked up the habit…what, eighty years ago? On the beach.

He wrote, ‘Cycle 99’ before realizing it, and crossed that out. What were they calling this place? Something Barry had said.

‘Endgame,’ he wrote, ‘year two…’ What was the date, anyhow? Eh, he’d fill it in later.

He tapped the page with his pencil. Where to even start with this?

He wrote, _Lucretia is acting moody and weird_ , and paused, and scratched it out. Whether or not people were going to read it, it was still an official document. He started again.

_I am concerned by some recent changes in Lucretia’s behavior._

Davenport tapped his pencil against his chin.

_She’s grown substantially in confidence and leadership since we first met. She has become a capable caster, one of the better pilots among the crew, and a trusted friend. But this new development—_

He stopped, and scratched out the last line too. This wasn’t a new development. It was just newer than for most.

* * *

“Is this really necessary?” asked Lucretia, hands folded tightly on table in the library. “I don’t see the point of a personal debrief.”

Davenport looked up from his log, amused. “That sounds familiar. I feel like you should be the one taking notes here.”

Lucretia’s sharp look softened. “Well.”

“I just want to make sure you’re all right,” said Davenport.

“Merle already checked me out. And for that matter, why did you require a physical? We just reset—”

“That’s not—I’m just…” Davenport paused. How to phrase this? “I’m worried that you’re still carrying the things from the Judges’ World with you.”

“Believe me,” sighed Lucretia, “I’d like to forget all of it as soon as I can.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” said Davenport. “You’ve changed, Lucretia. I just want to understand how.”

Lucretia grimaced. “Listen, Davenport, I—what happened down there—” She rested her head in her hands. “I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it.”

Davenport tried to beat back his impatience. “That’s all right. We can take our time.”

They were silent for a while, and then Lucretia took a deep breath, in and out. “All right. All right. What would—where should we start?”

“You said the ship crashed.”

She nodded.

“We all saw the hole in the hull, from where she was shot down, which you repaired?”

“With the extra parts, yes,” she said.

“Barry and I assessed the other damages. She was nearly unflyable at one point.”

“Nearly,” said Lucretia quietly.

Davenport waited.

“It uh…she puttered along well enough to get far away from the city,” she said, in a steady monotone. “I tried to land a few times. I was ambushed by marauders every time I set down. They seemed to be everywhere. And they were all so...” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Wild. They looked like they were starving.” She swallowed. “Anyway. Eventually I had to crash-land in a field. It was growing something like pumpkins, I think, some sort of squash. I tried to take off again, because I was in the open, but the connections to the bond engine were fried, so—”

“They’re repaired now,” said Davenport in surprise, scribbling as she spoke. “The connectors.”

“Yes, I managed to fix them,” said Lucretia. “You keep very thorough notes, Captain.”

“I would have thought they were pretty incomprehensible to anyone who wasn’t an engineer.”

Lucretia hesitated. “It wasn’t a quick process. I lived off those godsdamned pumpkin things for weeks.”

“How did they taste?”

“Like only the finest of Magnus’s sweaty socks,” she said, deadpan.

Davenport laughed. “Gods.”

“They dried easily, so I ended up taking a lot of them with me, and I swear, I couldn’t make myself eat a single bite.” She shuddered. “They’re in the galley still.”

“Oh is that what that cupboard is full of?” said Davenport. “I could hear Taako screaming from up here.”

Lucretia smiled a little. The two of them sank into silence as Davenport recorded all this.

“Wait, now,” said Davenport, pausing in his writing, “if there was a cultivated field…where was the farmer?”

“I was worried about that too,” she said, nodding. “I watched for weeks while I was repairing the ship, but nobody came. I found out later he’d been…taken to the judges.”

“Oh gods,” breathed Davenport.

She nodded, not looking at him. After a quiet moment she said, “Were they very terrible?”

Davenport clenched his jaw. “They were nothing if not just.”

“Justice.” Lucretia spat out the word. “What good is justice if it’s not tempered with wisdom? With mercy?” She leaned toward him. “The field was attached to a village, the only one I found on the entire world. They’d carved this tiny island of sanity in this awful, feral place, and they’d only managed it by living so justly that—” 

She stopped, took another shaky breath, and gritted her teeth. “I was just so sick of those damned pumpkins. I snuck into the village at night and stole some eggs, and they caught me, but the village elders said—” Her voice broke. She started again. “They said it would be a shame to send someone so young to the judges, so an alternative act of justice must be performed.”

Davenport shook his head uncertainly. “Alternative…act—”

“They cut off my hand.”

His jaw dropped. “What?”

“They cut off my hand,” she pronounced bitterly, “and they called it mercy. If I wasn’t ambidextrous, I would have been crippled. I felt crippled as it was! Can you imagine living in a society so _obsessed_ with justice that they see causing permanent disability as a _mercy_?”

Davenport was shocked into silence.

Lucretia closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. She was forcing herself to breath evenly. Davenport tried to do the same, but the rage was making it hard. How dare they? How _dare_ they!

“They were kind, in their way,” said Lucretia coldly, looking back at him. “They gave me work to do, to earn food. I don’t suppose you’ve ever tried to sweep with one hand?”

Davenport clenched his fist and shook his head no.

“It’s no picnic.” She held out her right hand, and opened it and closed it slowly.

He cleared his throat. “When was this?”

“Month four, day sixteen is when they cut it off.” She folded her hands tightly together again, her tone flat. “But who was counting? I stayed with them a few weeks, but they started asking questions about who I was, where I came from—I managed to keep them away from the ship, but then a man came from the city, a man who said he was looking for the…the seventh harbinger…” She shook her head again. “That was when I found out you were dead. I thought you might be, but now I was sure. So I ran again.”

“Did they chase you?” asked Davenport.

“Almost constantly,” she said, averting her gaze. “And if it wasn’t them, it was the outlaws in the wilderness. I started to want the Hunger to come. I was looking _forward_ to it.”

“Did you look for the light?”

“At first, yes.” The veins were standing out on the back of her hands. “But after a while I had to concentrate on survival.”

Davenport surveyed her carefully. “Is that it?”

She looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“Is that the only reason you stopped looking?”

“I’m not sure what you’re implying,” she said, eyes flashing.

“I’m implying that you’re thinking something you’d rather not say.”

“What do you want me to say?” she snapped. “That I hated them? The whole world? That I thought their kind of justice ought to be wiped from existence?”

“Did you?” asked Davenport. He didn’t blame her if the answer was yes.

She looked away, silent for a moment. Her voice was hoarse when she spoke again. “Sometimes. But at a certain point I had to put that aside. Hatred…takes an awful lot of energy. I had to focus on what’s important.”

“Survival?”

“Us.” She swallowed. “That we come back to see another year. So I did what I had to and I stopped looking. And I made it.”

Davenport nodded. “You did the right thing, Lucretia.”

She looked at him with quiet but rock-solid confidence. “I know.”

* * *

_As time went on from then, I found myself more and more grateful for her newfound resolve,_ Davenport wrote. _She saved lives with her quick thinking and decisive action on more than one occasion. Furthermore, she began offering suggestions which, save one, we all implemented. Her wisdom is indicative of this long century._

The light changed. Davenport glanced up. Some cloud cover was coming in. 

_Unfortunately,_ he went on, _it is the one suggestion of hers that we haven’t implemented that worries me the most._

* * *

“Well, it sounds like we have a pretty big majority here,” said Davenport to the crew, gathered around the kitchen table.

Lucretia treated him to a betrayed look.

“Listen, if I can, real quick, Lucretia,” Magnus jumped in. “Here’s the thing, if you think about a logical order—let’s do the seven artifact thing. That doesn’t work, the next time we get the Light of Creation on a future cycle, we can do your thing.”

She shot Magnus a grateful glance. Why did Magnus have to say that?

“Lucretia,” said Lup, leaning toward her, hand-in-hand with Barry, “I promise you, I _swear_ , on my life and my second life—this is gonna work. We’re nearly done, okay?”

Davenport watched Lucretia. She looked so…angry? Yes, and more than that, disappointed. She averted her gaze and said in a low voice, “Okay.”

“Okay.” Barry nodded to the crew. “Then I think we should start considering what sort of artifacts we’ll be making. Something useful, that’ll be sought after.”

“You know what you’re making?” asked Magnus.

“We have some ideas,” said Barry, smiling at Lup.

Lucretia sat up abruptly and climbed up the ladder to the deck.

The crew watched her go in silence. Lup let go of Barry’s hand and stood up. “I’ll go talk to her.”

“No,” Davenport cautioned her, hopping down from his chair. “I will.”

Lup frowned. “Maybe I can explain—”

“She doesn’t need more explanation,” said Davenport, climbing up the ladder. “That’s not the problem.”

“She’ll forget about this after a while,” said Taako, waving a dismissive hand. “Let her be.”

“I don’t think that’s wise,” said Davenport, and opened the hatch to emerge on deck.

“Let him go,” Merle said behind him. “She doesn’t want to hear from us right now.”

Davenport closed the hatch behind him. Lucretia stood at the prow of the ship, staring straight ahead. 

The _Starblaster_ was orbiting a world in an ice age, complete with megafauna, which was fun to watch from the deck if you could stand the chill. She didn’t seem to be looking down at the planet, though. Davenport shoved his hands into his pockets, which was not much proof against the cold, and strolled up to stand beside her.

She stood like a statue, eyes forward, seemingly unbothered by the wind. Davenport huddled into his shoulders and waited for her to speak.

He was considering going inside to get both of them coats when she said, “You know, if you had spoken up in defense of my idea, there wouldn’t have been such a large majority.”

Davenport hesitated. “I didn’t speak up for Lup and Barry’s idea either.”

“No, but there were two of them,” she said stiffly. “And only one of me. If you agreed with me, the least you could do was say so—”

“Lucretia.” Davenport looked up at her. “I think Lup and Barry’s idea is more practical.”

The hurt that crossed her face made Davenport’s heart sink. “I thought—I thought of all people you would agree that unleashing magical items on an unsuspecting world is a risk that we just can’t—”

“A risk?” Davenport looked at her in disbelief. “Your idea has a risk of success or death. _Permanent_ death. If it fails, that’s the end of everything.”

“It won’t fail,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I don’t understand why you’re so certain,” said Davenport. “The physics—”

“I know the physics!” she snapped. “Don’t treat me like I’m a child! I haven’t been a mere biographer for a long time, as you are well aware. I have worked on this idea for decades, and the rest of you aren’t even giving it a chance!”

Davenport frowned. “Don’t mistake this tone for condescension, Lucretia. You know how much I respect you. But your plan is the definition of a last-ditch effort, and I can’t condone it as our first move.”

“First move?” she demanded. “It’s been ninety years! This could save _everyone_ —”

“Or it could obliterate them,” Davenport snapped.

“Either way, the Hunger doesn’t get the plane,” she shot back. “It would end the cycle!”

“You don’t know that!” said Davenport, throwing out a hand. “And even if you did, you can’t make that choice for an entire plane!”

“We have before.”

The sentence fell on Davenport like a blow. He shoved his hand back in his pocket. “Maybe so. But this time, this plan…it’s not our choice to make.”

“It’s _no one’s_ choice to make,” said Lucretia, leaning down toward him slightly. “And yet, here we are.”

Davenport shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, Lucretia, you can’t do this.”

“Well I won’t,” she spat, turning back to look straight ahead. “We voted on it.”

He glared at the deck. This was bad. They’d all argued before, but he’d rarely seen Lucretia this angry.

“I know this isn’t what you wanted,” he began.

“Damn straight.” She clenched her fists.

“But this decision is not personally targeting you,” he said. “You know that, right?”

Slowly, she unclenched her hands and wrapped her arms around her stomach.

“We love you, Lucretia, and this isn’t going to change that,” he added.

Her stony look softened, just a little. “I just thought…I thought it would be nice to be the one whose heroism was championed, for once.”

Davenport raised an eyebrow. “Rather than championing someone else’s?”

She nodded, just a little.

He thought about this for a minute.

“You’re not just our storyteller, Lucretia,” he said quietly. “You’re a vital and irreplaceable part of our…our weird little family. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

She looked at him, still so young-looking, so vulnerable, even though she was as good as his age at this point. She swallowed and nodded again.

“All right?” he said, spreading his arms.

She took a knee and hugged him.

* * *

_I had hoped that was the end of the matter, but when Lup and Barry’s plan began to have unfortunate side effects, it reared its head again._

* * *

Davenport paced back and forth across the deck, thinking hard. They were gathered around the table, listening to Barry’s news. “And she didn’t say anything to you?”

Barry shook his head, wringing his hands. “I don’t—I don’t want to be an alarmist here, I trust her to come back. But—”

“It’s been a week,” said Taako, arms crossed and brow knit. “Cha’girl can take care of herself—I mean, she’s a lich for gods’ sake—but she wouldn’t just wander off somewhere. Not for so long. Not without telling us.”

“Where would she even go, not taking you with her?” said Magnus, scratching his head.

“After the gauntlet.” Lucretia’s tone was low.

Davenport paused in his pacing. “Her gauntlet?”

Lucretia nodded slowly.

“We—I mean—we talked about that, but—but she knew the artifacts have to be wanted, to keep the Hunger away,” stuttered Barry. “She wouldn’t just—just—”

“Two thousand, three hundred, and eighty one people,” Lucretia intoned.

“What?” said Davenport.

“That’s how many people were killed by the gauntlet, the last time someone got ahold of it,” said Lucretia, shifting in her seat. “Lup asked me to write it down in the Casualties Record.”

The crew was struck silent.

“Perhaps,” said Lucretia carefully, “It’s time to reconsider my plan.”

“What, your shield idea?” said Merle.

She nodded. “If Lup has been missing this long, then she’s been hurt or trapped. And we’ve seen that our artifacts do more damage than we could have possibly anticipated. I estimate that within twenty years, they will have done more harm than the Hunger does on worlds where we’ve found the light.”

“So what, we just pick up and run?” scoffed Magnus.

“We’re giving up on Lup after she’s been gone for a _week_?” spat Taako.

“On the contrary,” said Lucretia. “We’re embracing what I believe to be her idea, of regathering the artifacts and recombining them.”

“We’ll draw the Hunger back after we’ve got two of them together!” said Barry.

“So we just forget about her?” shouted Taako.

“If you prefer, we can wait until another child gets ahold of the philosopher’s stone and turns her village to candy,” said Lucretia icily.

Taako snarled. “All right. You wanna play dirty? How about that city that was starved out in that siege ‘cuz of your stupid staff, Lu?”

“That’s precisely my point,” said Lucretia. “This artifact plan failed. We can’t keep endangering the world like this. Lup herself made us promise—”

“No,” said Davenport.

The crew turned to look at him.

“Lucretia, I’m not arguing that this wasn’t the plan,” he said quietly. “But jumping straight to your idea is hasty and irresponsible. We’ve only been here for a little while. Let’s just…find Lup. This might be nothing.”

She looked at him with an unreadable expression, her face liked carved marble.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “Nothing.”

* * *

_Since then, Lucretia has spent more and more time by herself, holed up in her quarters or the library, doing who knows what. I am concerned for her, and for the crew. The loss of Lup, with no year-end promise of getting her back, has been devastating to all of us, especially Barry and Taako._

He sighed and massaged his forehead.

_I feel like the most useless captain in history. Losing crew to despair and isolation and whatever’s kept Lup from us—_

“Tea’s on,” said Merle, appearing from the hatch. He set two cups on the deck, climbed up the ladder, picked them both up, and brought them to the table. “Here you are, Dav.”

“Thanks, Merle,” said Davenport, accepting the cup. He wrote, _I’ll talk to Lucretia later. We can’t continue like this._

“Whatcha writing?” asked Merle, shuffling the deck of cards on the table.

“Just trying to work through a problem,” he said, skimming over the entry again. “Oh, do you know the date?”

“June 30th,” said Merle, dealing the cards.

Davenport added the date, closed his log, and shoved his pencil in his pocket. Time for a gloomy game of Yooker, killing time until…until what? He picked up his hand, not really looking at the cards. Idly, he wondered where the Oculus was, and if someone was using it to create something horrible.

He shut his eyes and took a deep breath. The more he thought about this, the more he thought Lucretia might be right, at least that the artifact plan was the wrong idea.

Merle laid down a card, and Davenport did as well. Merle took both. 

Then again…not running after a year felt like luxury. Occasionally he’d remember that the Hunger had not found them, and every time he was awash with relief. And this place, which was so very like the home they’d all left—for all its problems, the thought of leaving it was wrenching.

The rhythm of the game was a bit soothing. There were no right answers, but maybe…maybe he could at least come to some kind of understanding with Lucretia. Make things right with her.

A thought nibbled at the back of his head. Davenport frowned. “Did you say it was June 30th?”

Merle looked up from the game and nodded.

Davenport shook his head in disbelief. “Holy shit…I think it's my birthday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to tazscripts on tumblr for help with the canon dialogue. (Check them out, they're amazing.)


	9. Charts of the Stars Above Faerun (by Aberforth Math)

Davenport brushed a wrinkle out of his blue uniform jacket, waiting for the Director to finish writing. 

The fuzz in his head had been particularly bad today, but work was almost done, and soon he’d have some free time. That little toy model ship of his was coming along nicely. It had been slow going on the tiny…what was that boat called? Slicer. Dicer. Something like that. The fuzz wasn’t giving up the word today. 

At any rate, his progress had been halting. It was so hard to focus on it, and what was worse, he had the nagging feeling it shouldn’t be this difficult. Still, he was glad the Director had given it to him. It was nice to have something to do other than listen to the fuzz. The Director was always so kind to him, ever since they’d met. Davenport avoided thinking too hard about that, since the fuzz was so overwhelming before a certain point in his memory, but he did know he’d been wandering Neverwinter alone, homeless and hungry and more confused than usual, when the Director found him and took him in.

She’d been so tired lately. Davenport did his best to help her, as much as he could. He was pretty sure he owed her his life.

“Here you go,” said the Director, folding the piece of paper and sliding it across her desk. “This one is for Johann, and this one—” she folded another, “—is for Leon. And…” She took her little watch out of her desk, the one that looked comically small in her long fingers, and opened it. “Yes, after you do that, you’re off for the evening.”

“Davenport,” he said, nodding, and took the papers. He had to stand on tiptoe to reach over her desk.

The Director heaved a sigh. She shut the watch and put it away. “How did you do it, Davenport?” she muttered, perhaps to herself. “How did you carry all this weight?”

“Davenport?” He gave her a puzzled frown and pointed at the letters. “Davenport?”

Her characteristic poise broke a little to reveal a small smile. “No, not the letters.” Her smile fell. “I wish I could speak to you again.”

Davenport furrowed his brow. She _was_ speaking to him. He might not understand what she was talking about, but that was relatively normal.

She rested her head in her hand. “I miss you.”

This didn’t make any sense. Davenport thought hard. She was sad, that he was sure about. How could he help her?

He circled the desk to her chair and spread his arms, offering a hug. “Davenport?”

She pressed her lips together. “I’m not sure that would be entirely appropriate.”

“Davenport,” he scoffed. He wasn’t just an employee, he was her ward. And her friend, too, even if he could never remember her name. He spread his arms wider.

The Director smiled. “Well, all right.” She knelt and accepted the hug. Davenport squeezed her tightly, until she relaxed.

“Thank you, Davenport.” She sat back in her chair. “I appreciate it.”

“Davenport,” he said, nodding. She turned back to her work at her desk, giving him one last sad little smile, and Davenport hurried off to his task.

He left her office and the surrounding dome and made his way onto the grassy field. It was cold out, and sunsets were coming early now. Davenport huddled into his collar, hurrying toward the voidfish’s dome. 

“Hey Davenport!” Miss Fangbattle and Mister Burnsides passed, Miss Fangbattle waving.

Davenport smiled and waved back.

“What’s good, Davenport?” asked Mister Burnsides.

“Off to do something Davimportant?” said Carey with a grin.

The fuzz in his brain spiked. Davenport winced and grunted.

“What’s wrong?” Magnus stopped. “You okay, Dav?”

Augh, that was worse, that was _worse_ —the fuzz drowned out everything, like raking sandpaper across his mind. He closed his eyes and covered his ears.

It took maybe ten seconds before the fuzz backed down. Davenport shook his head to clear it out and opened his eyes. Magnus and Carey were both kneeling next to him, looking at him with concern.

“What was that?” asked Carey in a low voice. “Are you all right?”

Nicknames. Something about the nicknames made the fuzz worse. “Davenport, Davenport Davenport,” he said.

Carey and Magnus exchanged a glance. “Sorry,” said Magnus. “I don’t understand.”

C’mon, he told his brain. One more word. Let me have one more word today. He placed a hand on his chest. “…I’m…Davenport.”

Carey’s eyebrow ridges shot up. “Oh, the nicknames? You don’t like the nicknames?”

“Davenport,” he said, with a relieved nod.

“No problem, right?” said Carey, nudging Magnus and hopping to her feet.

“Yeah, no problem.” Magnus stood up slowly, a brief puzzled look crossing his face. “Sorry, Davenport. Way to get another word in there, though.”

“Why, though?” Carey asked Magnus.

“Don’t talk about him like he’s not here,” said Magnus, whacking her arm.

“Ow, jeez.” She rubbed her arm and pulled a face. “Kay, then, Davenport, why?”

Because it made the fuzz worse. Davenport frowned. Is that what it was? Was there more? And even if there wasn’t, how was he supposed to tell them?

“Because your name is all you’ve got?” Magnus suggested.

Hmm. Not quite true. He had a home at the Bureau and his friends and the Director looking after him. Of course, Davenport was usually the only word he had. Davenport shrugged. “Davenport.”

“That’s sad as hell,” Carey muttered.

“Yeah, well.” Magnus shrugged. “You good, Davenport?”

“Davenport.” He nodded, and then pointed to the voidfish dome. “Davenport.”

“Yeah, we’ll let you get back to whatever,” said Carey, pulling Magnus away by the elbow. “C’mon, man.”

Davenport walked on across the field, unsettled in a vague way. Sometimes that happened—someone would make an offhand comment that would crank the fuzz up, but why was this time so bad?

Like he did just about every day, Davenport contented himself with the fact that he’d never know.

He reached the voidfish’s dome, scanned his bracer on door, and took the elevator down, humming along with the muzak distractedly. The doors opened, revealing the voidfish’s tank.

Davenport liked it down here. It was always warm, in a sort of damp way, maybe, but pleasant. The guards were there, as usual, and Johann leaned against the tank, playing a slow, sweet song on his violin. And in the tank itself, tentacles curling and uncurling in the dark water, the voidfish drifted. 

Davenport looked fondly at the voidfish. It was beautiful—of course it was beautiful, everyone knew it was beautiful—but something about it always hit him like a gut punch. It was sad, too, like the Director.

Ah, but that was just nonsense, wasn’t it? It was just a pretty fish.

Johann looked up and stopped playing. “Oh. Hey Davenport.” He straightened, as much as Johann ever straightened, and sighed with immeasurable melancholy. “How are you?”

Davenport shrugged, and sighed, not quite as good a sigh as Johann’s, but one that expressed his bad fuzz day. “Davenport, Davenport.”

Johann nodded. “Big mood. You need something?”

Davenport handed off the Director’s letter.

“From the Director?” Johann asked, taking it. Davenport nodded. “Cool. Thanks.”

“Davenport.” Davenport took the elevator back up and left the voidfish’s dome.

Davenport took his time heading toward the artificer’s chambers, because the stars were starting to come out. The moon base was so high up, so far from any lights or tree cover, that in good weather the view of the stars was always perfect. He stopped in the middle of the field to look at them.

The stars gave him such a complicated set of emotions. They made the fuzz worse, for one thing, and something about them made him angry and a little sad, but even so, he loved them. It was like scratching a mosquito bite. It probably wasn’t a good idea, and it hurt, but for a moment there was so much satisfaction in it.

“Stargazing?”

Davenport started. Mister Highchurch had strolled up beside him while he wasn’t looking. “Davenport.”

“I was thinking I’d do a little bit of that myself,” said Merle, huddled down into his coat. “Want to join me?”

Davenport liked Merle, very much. He liked just about everyone in the Bureau, and the Reclaimers he was especially fond of, but he felt like he and Merle would be good friends. Unfortunately being friends involved asking questions, getting to know someone, which Davenport could not do, and even if he could, there was no guarantee he’d remember what he was told.

Though he’d like nothing more than to stargaze with Merle, Davenport shook his head and held up Leon’s letter. “Davenport.”

“Work to do, huh?” said Merle sympathetically, looking back up at the stars. “I hear ya. Still. Beautiful night.”

Ah, a few minutes wouldn’t hurt.

They spent a minute or two watching in silence. Davenport looked for familiar stars—not that he could remember any constellation names, no matter how many times someone tried to tell him, but he knew where his favorites were—

Wait. Davenport frowned. There should be a star there.

“Davenport.” He tugged Merle’s sleeve and pointed.

“What?” Merle squinted into the sky where Davenport was pointing. “You see something?”

“Davenport!” He shook his head vehemently.

Merle raised an eyebrow. “You… _don’t_ see something.”

“Davenport!” He nodded.

“Something that should be there?” asked Merle.

Davenport nodded again and pointed more insistently.

“Well it’s not completely dark yet,” said Merle. “Maybe it’ll be clearer later tonight.”

Davenport frowned. No, this star was always clear, but how was he supposed to say that to Merle?

A rare idea entered his mind. He seized it before the fuzz could swallow it and hurried off to Leon’s chambers. 

Leon was bent over his giant book of magical items when Davenport came in. He flinched when the door opened. “W--ah, hello. Sorry, I thought you were Taako. Can I help you with something?”

“Davenport.” He handed off the Director’s letter.

“Mm, yes, thank you.” Leon took it and opened it, scanning it. “Anything else?”

Davenport waited until he was looking, and then pointed up. “Davenport.”

Leon knit his brow. “The ceiling?”

“Davenport.” He shook his head and pointed again.

“The sky?”

Davenport nodded and mimicked holding a pencil.

“Sky…writing? Sky drawings?”

Close…Davenport frowned, and then mimed unrolling a scroll.

Leon stroked his beard. “Sky drawings…on a scroll…”

Davenport suppressed his frustration. He held up an imaginary paper, read it carefully, and then pointed off to the side.

“Sky maps,” guessed Leon. “Sky charts. Oh, are you looking for star charts?”

He pointed to Leon. “Davenport!” That was it.

“Yes, of course! I have some of those,” said Leon, hopping down from his tall chair and circling the round girth of the Gachapon. Davenport followed him to a bookcase in the corner, ten shelves full of what looked like magical reference books, with a ladder leaning against it. 

“If you’d hold the ladder, please?” Leon said, and ascended to the eighth shelf. Davenport braced the ladder while Leon pulled an oversized book from the shelf. “ _Charts of the Stars Above Faerun_? That what you’re looking for?”

“Davenport,” he called up, nodding.

“Then here you are.” Leon descended the ladder and handed off the book, which was awkwardly large for the pair of gnomes.

“Davenport,” he said gratefully. Perfect. He hurried back out of the dome.

Merle was lying in the middle of the field now, stargazing. Davenport scurried up and plopped down beside him, opening the book of star charts and flipping through them.

“Hey, buddy,” said Merle, sitting up. “What’s that?”

Bless Leon, these were exactly what he needed. He examined them carefully, till he found the one mapping the piece of sky he’d pointed to before. “Davenport, Davenport.” He pointed to the chart, to the star that should be there, and then directed Merle back to the sky.

Merle frowned, looking between the two a couple of times. “All right…I think I see, the star’s gone.”

“Davenport!” Finally!

“Huh.” Merle nodded thoughtfully. “That’s odd.”

No! This was important, he knew it was important, he just couldn’t wrangle out _why_ …Davenport frowned against the fuzz in his head, trying to wrench an answer out of the perpetual fog. No answer came.

“Stars don’t usually disappear, do they?” said Merle, looking back up at the sky. “Then again, I don’t know much about stars.”

Davenport’s heart sank. Merle wasn’t taking this seriously. Although really, why should he? Davenport couldn’t even express why it mattered.

“How old are those charts?” Merle went on. “They might be outdated or something. Or maybe we’re just reading them wrong.”

They were pretty old charts, Davenport had to admit.

“How do you know how to read them anyway?” asked Merle curiously. “I thought you were more of a…well, a butler.”

How _did_ he know how to read star charts? Davenport frowned. He couldn’t remember learning. He just knew. He tried to recall a teacher, or time studying. The fuzz did not yield.

“You know what, don’t worry about it,” said Merle, patting Davenport on the shoulder. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Davenport closed the book of star charts, feeling discouraged again. “Davenport,” he sighed.

“You said it, buddy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would say that the last chapter will be up on Tuesday, but it’s been giving me some trouble and I want to make sure it’s just right. In any case, I want to thank you all again for reading, for your kudos and kind words. You’re all lovely.


	10. Bottlenose Cove Gifts Postcard #119 “Wish You Were Here!” with Seagulls

Davenport threw the loop of rope around the post at the dock and pulled it taut. His cutter floated in, just close enough to step onto the dock from the deck. He tied off the rope, dropped the anchor, and sighed contentedly. The sea breeze ruffled his hair, which was getting a little long, and his beard, which was both an experiment and a byproduct of it being annoying to shave at sea. He wasn’t sure he liked it yet, but the wind felt nice.

“Afternoon,” called the burly dwarf on the dock, strolling over with a ledger. “Name?”

“Gregor Streph,” Davenport answered, hopping up onto the dock. “That’s with a P H.”

The dwarf wrote this down, nodding. “It’s two silver to dock here the first day, and a silver every day after that.”

Davenport dug a gold piece out of his pocket and handed it over. “Here you are. I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying.”

The dwarf looked impressed. She made a mark in her ledger, tucked the gold piece away in her belt, and turned away. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Likewise.” Davenport reached back down onto the deck, grabbed his satchel, and put it over his shoulder. All right. Stock up on supplies, get that hole in his boot fixed, and…oh, yes, find a courier. He pulled the stack of mail out of his satchel and flipped through it carefully. Better make sure he hadn’t forgotten anyone. Letters for Barry and Lup, Merle, Angus…postcards for Carey and Killian, Magnus, Taako, Avi, Leon, a few other folks from the Bureau…

He reached the end of the stack and stopped.

Davenport had bought this postcard a year ago. Generic ocean sunset painting, a few silhouetted seagulls in flight, and in loopy cursive, the words, “Wish You Were Here!” It was wrinkled and creased from where he’d crumpled it up and smoothed it out again. He turned the yellowed cardboard over to reveal the other side, which was almost blank, except for what he’d written when he’d bought it.

_Dear Lucretia,_

And that was all. He had tried to write more, but every word came out like a sword, and he didn’t want to write to her if he was writing just to vent his spleen. So he’d waited, until he was less angry, he told himself. And he’d waited.

He took a seat on the edge of the dock, carefully sliding the pile of mail back into his satchel, except for the postcard. As if by its own volition, the postcard turned over and over in his fingers.

* * *

The denim-clad intruder dove at the Director, and Davenport leapt in his way, throwing up his hands to push the man back. A couple of guards wrestled the intruder off, but not before he slipped a flask into Davenport’s hand.

Davenport frowned at the flask. Why?

The Director was kneeling on the ground, doing what she did every time one of the grand relics was found: channeling it into her staff inside her little bubble shield. He was never sure why she called it “destroying the relics,” but the fuzz made it impossible to wonder too hard about it, so he’d just accepted it.

“Oh my gods, did you—did you inoculate yourselves?” said the Director to the gathered members of the Bureau and the intruder. Angus was there, and the Reclaimers, too, all accompanied by guards today for some reason. Ah, yes, the Reclaimers! They’d be wanting their reward. He put the flask in his pocket and hurried off behind the dais.

“Yes we did,” Davenport heard Merle say. Davenport didn’t look, he was too busy opening the chest in which they kept the gold and gachapon tokens. He arranged them carefully on the silver tray and proceeded back to the front of the dais.

_Drink._

The word cut through the fuzz like the beam of a lighthouse. Davenport blinked a few times. Drink what? The only thing he had was the flask that the intruder had given him.

“What did you say?” demanded the Director.

_Drink._ The word was growing in his mind, crowding out any other thought. He couldn’t _not_ drink. That would be out of the question. Of course he would drink, and if it had to be from the intruder’s flask, so be it. He shifted the silver tray to one hand, popped open the lid of the flask, and took a swig.

“Lucretia, you gotta help them remember,” the intruder was saying.

Ugh, this tasted like voidfish…like voidfish…ichor…

The fuzz in his brain evaporated.

Hand shaking, Davenport looked wildly at the flask. The fuzz was gone. The fuzz was completely gone and he was _free_ , godsdammit. The model ship in his quarters was a cutter. His name was Davenport, he knew all the constellations above Faerun, and above his own world too, and he’d flown to those stars and run from danger among them over and over again. 

“Their—their—their minds are gonna shatter if you don’t!” Barry said. Barry, the intruder was _Barry_ , Barry Bluejeans, the best scientific mind on the crew and a necromancer and a lich and Davenport’s beloved friend Barry—

“Okay, listen, boys,” said Lucretia—Lucretia! The Director’s name was Lucretia! The greatest writer he’d ever met and his first friend among the crew!—“Just try to follow along as I explain it. Don’t try to think ahead because what happens next is very important.”

And from Lucretia’s lips poured into Davenport’s blessedly clear mind the truth he should have remembered from the beginning, the truth he’d lost, the truth _she’d_ taken from him—

“His life _was_ the mission,” she was saying. “He was impossible to edit around and so, unfortunately, his name was all he kept.”

Davenport looked in horror at the tray in his hand, the tray he’d held for her like some kind of-of—like a damn butler! He dropped it, and it crashed to the floor, the tray clattering, gold coins spilling, the gachapon tokens rolling away down the dais steps.

Lucretia started and looked at him. Davenport dragged his sleeve across his mouth—drooling like the vegetable he’d been, that was really captainly behavior—and turned his horror on her, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Lucretia,” he said. “What have you done?”

* * *

It took all of Davenport’s self-control not to crumple the postcard again in his fist. He put it down beside him on dock for a second and rubbed his eyes.

The breeze picked up again. Davenport slapped a hand down on the postcard before it could blow away.

Yes, he was angry still. She’d stolen his _entire life_ , had him looking like a talking monkey in front of his family and people he liked and respected—he hated that he was angry at her, but she should have known better—

* * *

“Ten. Nine.”

Taako was counting down. To what?

Somehow Davenport had ended up on his knees. He clutched his head to keep it from splitting in half. He tried to look up, got a flash of Taako pointing Lup’s umbrastaff at Lucretia before another wave of memories crashed over his mind, drowning out anything else. He groaned, because it hurt, gods, it hurt—

His hand wandered to the pocket where he used to keep his father’s watch. It wasn’t there. Where was his father’s watch?

“Lucretia, you can’t do this!” Barry was pleading. “We told you why the barrier’s not gonna work—”

More memories, more memories, more memories…

His crew was arguing, the same argument they’d had years ago, when they’d first presented these plans, with an extra bonus layer of bitterness toward Lucretia, especially from Taako, gods, poor Taako—

One thing at a time. Davenport squeezed his eyes shut. They had their memories back. All right, good. They had collected all seven relics, so they had the whole light of creation, also good. The Hunger’s scouts had come, and the stars had started disappearing, so that meant it was only a matter of time before—

He looked up. The sky was black, full of the tendrils of the Hunger. The end of the world was _here_.

“Lup made us promise that we would never again put a world in danger just to thwart The Hunger's plans,” Lucretia was saying from inside her bubble. “And that is exactly, _exactly_ , what we did to this world! And-and that’s why I took steps to fix it. What makes you think she wasn’t out there trying to do this _exact same thing_ when she disappeared?”

Barry opened his mouth to keep arguing, but Davenport spoke first. “Stop. All of you.”

He hauled himself to his feet, panting. His head was still pounding, but enough was enough.

“Where’s the ship, Lucretia?” he said.

Killian, Carey, and Angus were gaping at him. No.3113 probably would have been too, if she’d had a face. The silver tray might as well have spoken. He ignored them. 

Lucretia pressed her lips together, said nothing.

“We need to leave before it’s too late,” he snapped. “This plan—it didn’t work. We need to leave here and try again. Barry, Taako—” he turned to his friends. “We leave here and Lup comes back.”

Taako turned to him, face drawn with grief and disorientation. “What?”

“We leave here, and we start a new cycle, and we’re all back together again,” Davenport said again, trying to suppress his impatience. “That’s how it works, remember?”

“Okay, you know, we can’t run away this time, dude,” said Merle, trying to be jocular and coming off panicked. “I mean, Taako’s life has gone to shit, okay, that’s fine! But I got kids! And you know—Magnus, we got all these people relying on us—”

“Sirs, please don’t,” piped up Angus, on the verge of tears. “Don’t…don’t go! Don’t leave us to this! Please.”

Davenport grimaced. Gods, why did Angus have to be here for this discussion? “I’m sorry, kid. But it’s—this—” He gestured at the ceiling, at the Hunger. “This is the end of everything if we get caught up here.”

Angus’s face crumpled. Godsdammit. Davenport gritted his teeth. “Lucretia, where’s the _Starblaster_?”

She shot him a stony look and bent back over her work, channeling what was left of the Animus Bell into her staff.

“Lucretia!” snapped Davenport. She ignored him.

“I’m sorry, you guys can do what you want, but I’m not running this time,” said Merle.

Davenport hopped down from the dais and blocked out their voices, glaring at Lucretia. She didn’t look up. He knew better than to try and fight her shield spell. He’d seen her perfect it, back before he was a gibbering idiot. What to do. What to do…

“Listen, running away?” demanded Carey. “That’s not how we do things here in the fuckin’ B.O.B. Now everybody just _stop_ and just explain what the fuck is going on so we know how to—”

And the ceiling exploded.

* * *

“I forgot to ask,” said a voice from behind him. 

Davenport jolted out of his reverie and looked up. It was the dock dwarf.

“Oo, sorry about that,” she said. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Did you bring any crew with you? I’ve got to record them too.”

“Oh, no,” said Davenport, picking up the postcard again. “Just me.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Takes skill to sail a cutter like that by yourself.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” said Davenport with a shrug.

“Right, with skill like that, who needs crew, huh?” she chuckled, and turned again to leave. Davenport winced.

* * *

The fight was over, and Lucretia disappeared.

Davenport growled in frustration, wiping blood from the scratch above his eye, and turned to his crew, his family. “Okay. Gang, listen up, I know I’ve been running at sort of a limited capacity for a while, but I’m—”

“You’ve been basically a living squeaky toy, but go on,” drawled Taako.

Davenport shot him a glare. “Listen, I’m still your captain.”

Taako’s mouth shut immediately. Davenport saw Carey and Killian exchange a glance, looking impressed.

“If you listen to me,” said Davenport, looking each of them in the eye in turn, “I swear to you, I can get us all out of this.”

“Yeah, go for it,” said Taako, and he was being totally sincere. “I’m all ears.”

Merle nodded. “We’re listening.”

Davenport let his hands relax and started giving out orders.

* * *  
At least he had the most important thing back, he thought, kicking his feet above the water. His family. She took them, but he got them back almost immediately. Because of course he did, they loved him, even if he was a living squeaky toy for years. It had been humiliating, but it hadn’t been enough to drive them away, and she had known that.

So maybe he could forgive her for that. Maybe. He hated feeling like a fool, but it was long over now, and thanks to the voidfish, no one thought of him that way. 

But how could he ever forgive her for taking the fate of the entire world into her own hands, without permission, just because—

Davenport squeezed his eyes shut. Because she thought it was the only right thing to do?

* * *

Davenport pulled open the drawers of Lucretia’s desk, one after another. Quills, pencils, ledgers, records, journals. He remembered—gods, he _remembered_ , that was new—he remembered seeing Lucretia keeping his father’s watch in here. He hadn’t even thought twice about it all these years. He hadn’t thought _once_. But the watch was gone, and there was nothing else in here that would give a clue to where Lucretia was or where she was keeping the _Starblaster_.

“Anything?” he asked Angus, who was digging through a cupboard.

“Nothing, sir,” said Angus. He stepped back from the cupboard and gave his little wand a wave. “Detect magic, please,” he said, and scrutinized the room. “Her portrait seems to be magical, sir. I think it’s an illusory spell.”

Davenport frowned at the portrait and held up his hands. His magic was pretty rusty, but maybe he could dispel it.

Yes, he could, there it was. The background of the portrait dissolved, revealing a beautiful painting of the crew. When had she painted that? He didn’t recognize it, but the picture hit him like a punch to the gut.

“Oh,” said Angus, almost reverently.

“Any other magic?” asked Davenport.

“None, sir.” Angus tore his eyes from the portrait.

“Damn.” Davenport started pacing. “All right, she’d want to be somewhere undisturbed. She’s probably left the base by now.”

“Not likely, sir,” said Angus. “Teleportation spells typically can’t go far.”

“We have that, at least.” He stopped pacing. “So where on the base—”

“Sir, what will you do if you can’t change her mind?”

Davenport looked up. Angus was trying to stare him down, which would have been endearing if Davenport had been in the mood for it. “We don’t have time for this, Angus.”

“I’d really like to know, sir,” said Angus sharply. “The Director gave me a home. She may have done some questionable things, but I owe her an awful lot and you seem very angry with her.”

Davenport gritted his teeth. Perceptive, wasn’t he? “I am angry, but I would never take my personal feelings out on anyone. Especially Lucretia.” He pointed at the painting. “She’s my family, understand?”

Angus glanced up at the painting and then back at Davenport. He swallowed, and nodded briefly. “What about the meeting rooms behind the dining hall, sir?”

“Good idea. C’mon.” Davenport took off running, out of Lucretia’s office and the dome that housed it. He heard Angus running behind him.

The field was wrecked, full of people fighting. Davenport focused on where he was going, but he caught glimpses of Team Sweet Flips rallying the Bureau, of people no longer fighting blindly but with purpose, thank the gods. They’d need to if they were going to survive this.

With an ungodly screech, a Hunger-riddled form that moved like a bat swooped down into their path. Davenport held out a hand and produced a blinding flash of light. The bat drew back, into the path of a magic missile that shot out from behind Davenport. Davenport glanced back; Angus’ wand was outstretched. Good kid.

They made it to the dome where the common spaces were, the dining hall, meeting rooms, and the kitchen. Davenport yanked open the door to the dining hall, let Angus slip inside, and slammed it shut.

The hall was deserted. It looked as though there had been a fight here, right in the middle of lunch, food scattered and dishes broken. There were no Hunger monsters, but luckily no dead bodies either.

“Quickest way to the meeting rooms is through the kitchen,” said Angus, hurrying across the room. Davenport followed him through the saloon style-doors.

“HAAAAAAA—” 

Both of them froze as one of the cooks, Sarai, barreled toward them with a frying pan before stopping abruptly. “Oh, gods.” She let the pan drop to her side and clutched her chest. “Angus and Davenport. Sorry about that.” 

“It’s all right, Miss Sarai,” said Angus. “Have you seen Madam Director?” 

“Oh, no, honey, I’m afraid I haven’t,” she said. “Don’t you worry, you two can stay in here with me, where it’s safe.”

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” said Davenport. “Go find Team Sweet Flips. They’ll inoculate you again, so you can see what we’re fighting, and then we’ll need your help securing the base.”

Sarai stared at him, slack-jawed and frozen.

“What?” Davenport threw out his hands. “Am I speaking infernal?”

“You might as well be, sir,” said Angus. “It’s okay, Miss Sarai, do what he says. We’ll explain later.”

Still gaping, Sarai nodded. She grabbed a knife from a nearby counter and scurried out the way they came in.

“Meeting rooms,” said Davenport, and Angus nodded hurriedly and led him to the back door of the kitchen into a hallway full of doors. Oh, yes, he’d been here before. He’d gotten lost, because the fuzz wouldn’t let him differentiate between doors. Davenport pulled one open, and then the next, and the next. Empty. Empty, empty.

“What _are_ we going to do if we find her, sir?” asked Angus, doing the same thing on the other side of the hall.

“We’ll talk to her,” said Davenport, opening another door. Empty.

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“We’ll take the light from her, and find the ship,” said Davenport. Empty!

“And leave us,” said Angus.

Davenport stopped, hand on a doorknob, and turned. Angus was giving him a heartbreaking look.

“I’m sorry, Angus, but it’s the way it has to be.” Davenport twisted the knob. Empty.

“You’re just going to let us die?” Angus demanded, voice trembling.

Davenport suppressed a groan. “Look, if we take the light with us, the Hunger will follow, all right?” he said. “There’s a chance you’ll live through it. And the Hunger won’t devour this whole planar system. But if Lucretia still has the light, she’ll cut off this plane from everything. We will all die.” He stared Angus straight in the eye. “Don’t you see?”

“So our choices are certain death or likely death?” said Angus reproachfully.

“I’m afraid so.” Davenport kept his tone cold and opened another door. All the better to ignore the pit in his stomach. This room was empty.

“Respectfully, sir, those are some pretty shitty choices,” said Angus.

“They’re the only ones we have,” said Davenport severely, turning to face Angus.

“They _can’t_ be.” Angus clutched his hands together, almost pleadingly. “There’s got to be something else. I know you don’t want anyone to die.”

“There isn’t anything else, okay?” Davenport snapped. “We’ve had a hundred years to find a third option, and there isn’t one. And no, I don’t want anyone else to die, but frankly that’s out of my hands at this point.”

“No it’s not, you’re the one making the choice!”

Davenport opened his mouth, realized he was doing so to shout at a child, and closed it again. He swallowed, made his tone even. “Listen. If there was a third option, I would take it in a second. But there’s not.”

“So you’re giving up?” Angus said, voice wavering.

“I’m just trying to do the only right thing I know,” said Davenport earnestly. “And I need your help with that, Angus.”

Angus’s lip trembled, but he nodded.

“I’m sorry.” Davenport looked down. “Really, I am.”

Angus sniffled a little. “We should check the library next.”

Davenport nodded. “Right.”

* * *

Davenport turned the postcard picture-side up, so he was looking at seagulls. She would have killed them all.

His fingers swiveled it to the other side, to the words. But who knows if their friends—if Angus, for example—would have lived through the Hunger’s onslaught? The thought of him dead made Davenport feel ill.

Seagulls. Doing the right thing doesn’t mean anything if you’re wrong about the right thing.

Words. But hindsight is always clearer, and he’d been just as wrong as she was.

Seagulls. She’d made him look like a fool.

Words. But given that he was just as wrong as she was, he’d always been a fool, hadn’t he? He just hadn’t seen it.

Seagulls. Was that any better? Was the fact that they were both wrong any reason to forgive her?

* * *

Davenport and Angus emerged from yet another building void of Lucretia. The crew was gathered on the grassy field, along with Carey and Killian and…Lucas Miller? Wasn’t he supposed to be dead?

Then again, now that Davenport was revisiting the memory fuzz-free, it had seemed awfully convenient that he died…

He ran up to the crew. “Okay, we looked all over, but there’s no sign of Lucretia. Did you all find the _Starblaster_?”

Lup winced. “Ohhh. I…may have forgotten that we were supposed to be doing that.”

Davenport felt his eyes bulging in their sockets. “What the hell were you—”

“Are you all talking about Lucretia’s spaceship?” Lucas interrupted.

“It’s kind of all of ours,” said Magnus.

“Yeah, it’s more like a timeshare,” quipped Merle.

“ _Lucretia’s_ spaceship?” scoffed Davenport.

“Well, I know where that is,” Lucas said, walking over to one of the two trees on the quad. “Lucretia had me and my mom build a hangar for it right here in the Bureau HQ.” He dragged his hand down the tree’s bark, and then winced.

The crew waited.

“I just got a splinter,” Lucas whined.

Ah, yes, even vegetable Davenport hadn’t liked Lucas. Davenport gritted his teeth and walked a ways away, to look over the edge of the base. The Hunger was spreading rapidly. The giant judges were gone, but minions of the Hunger still poured out from its tendrils. They were over a village now, and Davenport watched as people fled in all directions from the black-and-neon masses.

“Here we go,” said Lucas, and Davenport turned at the sound of mechanical whirring. A gap had opened up in the quad, and emerging dusty and dinged from the gap was the _Starblaster_.

Despite everything, a measure of peace settled over Davenport. They could get away. They could go. He marched back to the group to stand beside his ship.

“All right,” he said to his crew. “It looks like you all have done some good work out there, but the facts haven’t changed. The Hunger will keep attacking this world until it’s destroyed. We…” He glanced at Angus, at Killian and Carey, and sighed. “We have to go.”

“Not yet,” said Magnus, and as he said it, Lucretia appeared, standing in front of the Starblaster’s gangplank, still behind her shield and channeling the spell.

“Not yet,” repeated Lucretia. “Please, please, please, I’m begging you all. We’ve been through so much, we’ve given up _so much_ to make this work.”

Given up against our will, Davenport wanted to shout, but that would have only made things worse.

“I am begging you,” she went on. “Please let me do this, please let me put up the barrier.”

“There has to be—” Magnus swallowed. “Lucretia, there has to be another way.”

“If that spell goes off, you’re going to sever every bond this world’s got!” said Barry, starting to get frantic. “This plane would be doomed!” He turned to the rest of them, pleading. “We’ve got two choices, gang. We stay and Lucretia’s barrier cuts this world off from the rest of existence, or we run, and we try again next cycle. That’s it. Two choices. It’s time to decide.”

Angus looked like he was going to burst into tears.

“Um?” Taako stuck up a finger. “There’s a third option.”

“Woah!” Merle cried, as something small and bright floated out of his pocket to the air between them and shattered with a _plink_.

A cloud of thick white fog rolled over them suddenly, whiting out everything—

And for a moment, the fighting and rumbling went silent.

Davenport saw himself, pulling a rope on a little ship, out at sea. This version of him looked carefree, happy, as the sail caught the wind and pulled the ship across the waves, into a vibrant sunrise.

And he saw his friends too, all of them, happy and safe and without worry. He felt like all the air had been sucked out of him.

“What is this?” said Lucretia’s voice, on the verge of tears. “What does this mean?”

“I would like that one, please?” mumbled Magnus. 

“It—it means there is a happy ending, if we get to it,” said Merle reverently.

“Listen,” said Taako, as the visions began to fade, “We could close ourselves off, and we could run, but there’s a third option. Lucretia, your spell—could it keep the Hunger bound? Could it…could it cut the Hunger off?”

The idea dropped into the center of the circle like a lead weight.

Davenport furrowed his brow. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Lucretia stopped channeling the spell. “Huh.”

The physics, the same physics that would utterly obliterate this plane if Lucretia had her way…the physics checked out.

“Huh,” said Barry.

But would it be big enough? Lucretia could make her shield cover an entire plane, so perhaps so, but the Hunger was larger than a plane now, wasn’t it? Maybe not much larger…

“Huh,” said Lup.

Could this…could this actually work?

“We’ve been basically trolling that thing for a hundred years,” Taako was babbling. “The only thing it wants is to pick us up and absorb us into itself, and I don’t know about you all, but Taako’s good out here.”

Lucretia caught Davenport’s eye, her expression a question. What was she asking?

Gods, she was asking for his approval, his go-ahead. Still, even now? But he nodded, slowly.

She shifted her staff and what was left of Animus Bell in her arms. “That would work. But I would have to be on the plane that I’m casting the spell over in order to do it. We would have to get up there.” She nodded to the sky. “Into the Hunger.”

Merle shot Davenport a grin. “If only we had a ship that moved from plane to plane!”

Davenport couldn’t help but smile. He reached out to touch his ship. “I can get us up there, I know I can.”

The _Starblaster_ hummed under his fingers, as if to agree. He saw the look pass between his family, that look of resolute decision. They were in, all in.

“Whoever’s coming,” Davenport said carefully, “now’s the time for goodbyes. Make them quick. We’re short on time.”

Lucretia caught his eye with a grateful glance. He looked away quickly and walked up the gangplank, ignoring the sound of them talking behind him.

The feel of the deck beneath his feet was like a pair of familiar slippers. He ran a hand along the rail. She was so dusty. A pretty thing like her wasn’t made to sit idle.

He had forgotten the way the deck sloped up slightly to the wheel. He’d forgotten the way the wheel fit his hands, because it was his hands that made it. He’d forgotten that chip in the rail, that scratch on the control panel, that broken dial they’d never gotten around to fixing. Gods, how he’d missed this ship—or no, he hadn’t even known what he was missing, had he?

Davenport flipped a few switches. At the stern, the bond engine slowly began to spin.

“You up for one last flight, old buddy?” he murmured, and the _Starblaster_ began to sing.

“Davenport?”

He paused, and leaving one hand on the wheel, where it belonged, turned to face Lucretia. She stood before him, aged too much—how had she grown so old?—still and poised as always, but weary, so weary. She’d been weary for a long time, hadn’t she? 

A flicker of anger appeared in his gut. He looked down so he wasn’t glaring at her. “Yes?”

“I just…since this may well be our last conversation. I’m sorry for what I did to you, Davenport.”

He looked back up. She looked genuinely grieved, but that didn’t settle his gut any. He sighed. “What do you expect me to say?”

She swallowed and shifted her staff and the bell in her arms again. “Well. I don’t expect forgiveness. But I wanted you to know.”

“You took everything,” said Davenport flatly. Do not shout. That’s not what he wanted to spend this time doing.

“I tried to work around your memories, but there’s an awful lot of you in what you did for IPRE, and I couldn’t—”

“Are you apologizing for taking so much of my memory, or for violating my mind in the first place?” Davenport interrupted. “Because if it’s the former, then you wouldn’t deserve forgiveness even if I felt like giving it.”

Lucretia drew back as if she’d been slapped. “Davenport, I—I couldn’t stand by anymore while our artifacts killed people! The psychological toll on you and the others alone was unbearable.”

“Psychological toll?” Davenport repeated, forcing his tone to stay level.

“I’m not going to apologize for trying to do the right thing,” she said, her voice ragged.

Davenport sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. How much time was there left? His other hand floated to his breast pocket. Ah, right. “Lucretia, where’s my father’s watch?”

She shifted her staff to her other hand and reached into her robe pocket. “I was going to give it back to you. As soon as you remembered.”

“Why didn’t you give it back to me sooner?” Davenport said sharply.

“I tried,” she said, pulling out the watch, so small in her long fingers. “You didn’t seem to understand what it was for.”

She held it out to him and he snatched it up. The familiar weight and texture in his hand calmed him a little. He flipped it open. That’s right, he hadn’t understood. It had seemed like a strange and rather boring toy. The second hand ticked merrily along, as it had for over a century.

“I’ve been a joke. For…what’s it been?” He snapped the watch shut. “Two years? Three? Or has it been thirty?”

“Ten,” said Lucretia. “And you were not a joke. Your presence was invaluable.”

“As your errand boy,” he spat.

“As my friend,” said Lucretia, tone thick with emotion. “Do you know what it’s like to have so many people depending on you—to have _everything_ depending on you? To be alone like that?”

He slipped his watch into his pocket and glared at her. “Of course I do.”

Her mouth shut. She looked away.

Davenport sighed. Where were the others? He glanced over the side of the ship. “Are they still talking?”

They were. Angus was giving something to Merle. There was no _time_ for this.

“We’ve got to fucking go!” he called down to them. “Come on!”

“One more!” Magnus called back. “Almost done!”

Davenport gritted his teeth and glanced up at the Hunger above.

“This could be it for us,” Lucretia said quietly. “We could die doing this.”

“We’ve had a pretty good run of it,” Davenport mumbled.

“Davenport?”

He looked to her. Her eyes were welling up with tears. “I’m so, so glad you’re back. I love you.”

Those three words felt like a knife. Davenport hesitated. She was right, this could be the last chance.

“Lucretia, I—”

“All right!” Merle was coming up the gangplank, flexing his hands, followed by Magnus and Taako. “Let’s kick some ass.”

The time was now. Davenport turned back to the wheel, relieved. He didn’t really know what he was going to say anyway. “Everyone ready?”

“Wait, I want to tell Killian one last thing,” said Magnus’ voice behind him.

“Go!” said Taako.

Davenport flipped the switches and steered the _Starblaster_ off the base. A glance over his shoulder showed his family brace themselves against the takeoff. Beside him, Lucretia began channeling the last shreds of the light into her staff.

This was it. He set his jaw, hands tight on the wheel, and eased his ship forward and up.

The Hunger hung above them like a death shroud, tendrils hitting the ground below with titanic crashing. He’d never been this close to it, not by choice. Its very proximity felt oppressive.

“C’mon, take the bait,” he murmured.

The Hunger lit up suddenly, twinkling neon flashes rolling through it like a wave, and from the source of the wave, hundreds of ribbons of blackness burst out toward them. Good. Carefully, Davenport put his hand on the throttle.

“Davenport,” said Lucretia urgently.

Not yet. Not yet. The ribbons uncurled and reached for them, moving so very fast.

“Davenport!” Lucretia repeated.

“Not yet,” he said, keeping his eyes affixed to the intercepting ribbons.

“Davenport, Davenport!” Lucretia tone was getting frantic.

Almost. Davenport smiled in anticipation. Just like old times.

“All right, buddy,” he said to his ship. “Dance for me.”

And at the last possible second, he cranked the throttle and yanked the wheel to the right. The ship rolled, over and over, and dove; tendrils of Hunger reached for them from the ground, and like a barracuda, like a shooting star, the _Starblaster_ moved to avoid them, left and right and up again. A laugh bubbled up from deep inside Davenport, an exhilarated burst of freedom—

A sheet of blackness fell from the sky, rising before them like a tidal wave. Davenport shouted, “Hold on!” to whoever could hear him, and turned the throttle up one more notch, shooting them headlong into the dark.

* * *

Davenport tore the postcard in half.

He knew now what he should have said in that last moment, back when he was sure they were about to die, and a postcard wasn’t going to do the trick. He put the pieces in his satchel and pulled out paper and a pencil instead.

_Dear Lucretia,_ he wrote, and paused. Should there be more greeting here? An ‘I hope you’re well’?

No, he’d wasted enough time.

_Dear Lucretia,  
I can’t pretend you didn’t hurt me when you took my memories. I can’t pretend that what happened didn’t happen. But_

Davenport took a deep breath, in and out.

_But I don’t think that’s what forgiveness is. I want to forgive you. I miss you._

There. He’d said it.

Well. Maybe not all of it.

_I love you too._

Davenport felt the weight of his anger lift off his heart. He breathed the free air for a moment, clutching the paper and pencil in his hand tightly as the sea breeze tugged at them. Gods, why had he been carrying that around for so long? 

After a moment he bent back over the paper.

_If you can forgive me for taking so long to say so, maybe I can sail your way soon. It would be good to see you again, my friend._

_Joyfully yours,  
Davenport_

He folded the letter up. When he found a courier he could seal it, so for now he just addressed it: The Director, Bureau of Benevolence. There.

Davenport slipped the letter into his satchel and looked out to the ocean. She might not accept his forgiveness. Or...or later he might not feel like forgiving her again. But here and now, all he wanted was to let go. He closed his eyes, letting the air caress his face.

“That’s a nice ship, mister.”

For the second time in an hour, Davenport jumped. A child was standing behind him, a teifling girl who couldn’t be more than ten. She thin and dressed as though she lived on the streets, and staring starry-eyed at his cutter.

“Thank you,” said Davenport, a little pleased. “I made her myself.”

“What’s her name?” asked the teifling, sitting down beside him on the dock.

“ _Moonpie_.”

The girl’s eyes went circular. “Like Captain Davenport’s ship!”

Davenport frowned. How did she know that? “I’m sorry?”

“You know, the voidfish told us,” said the teifling, kicking her legs excitedly above the water. “About how he built it with his friends when he was my age.”

Ah, the voidfish. He’d had trouble, after the fact, differentiating things he’d remembered from things the voidfish had beamed into his brain, into everyone’s brain. Apparently Lucretia had fed his entire biography to the voidfish. “Oh, of course.”

“I want to be like Captain Davenport,” the girl said, leaning back on the heels of her hands. “I want to build stuff and fly to the stars.” 

“Do you?” said Davenport, hiding a smile.

“Makkette!” The dock dwarf hurried up to the two of them. “I told you to quit hanging around here! Quit bothering this gnome.”

Makkette jumped to her feet. “I’m being good! I’m not making any trouble or stealing anything or—”

“I’m going to call the watch if you don’t leave this minute, you filthy urchin,” the dwarf snapped.

“No, ma’am, I think there’s a misunderstanding here.” Davenport stood up to face her. “She was giving me directions.”

The dwarf frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Certainly.”

Makkette nodded vehemently.

“All right, but I’m watching you, kid,” the dwarf growled, and walked away.

“Phew!” Makkette wiped her forehead dramatically. “Thank you, mister.”

“Well I really do need directions,” said Davenport. “I need to find a courier.”

“I can show you where they are,” she said, and bounded off up the dock. Davenport chuckled and followed.

“I built a boat once.” Makkette turned backward to face him as they walked into the cobblestone roads of town. “It was just a dinghy, but it floated okay.”

“Well done,” said Davenport, genuinely impressed.

“And then the street gang sank it,” she sighed. “But it was nice while it lasted.”

“What did you call her?” Davenport asked.

She smiled shyly. “ _Lup_. I think she’s great. Even if she is dead.”

“I agree completely,” said Davenport solemnly. This kid was smart. He wondered, did the Academy of Arcane Sciences have a scholarship program? He pulled his letters out of his satchel, and groped in the bag for a pencil and paper. “Makkette, can you hold these for a moment?”

“Sure, mister.” She took the stack from his hands. He scrawled a quick letter to Lucas asking about application processes. When he was finished, he caught Makkette staring at him.

“What?”

“You’re _him_ ,” she hissed, waving his letters. “You’re writing to all his friends and you’re him, you’re Davenport, aren’t you?”

“It’s rude to read other people’s mail,” he said mildly, folding up the letter to Lucas.

“Sorry mister—I mean, Captain,” she said, handing the stack back to him. “Wow! I never thought I’d meet—”

“Let’s keep things quiet, all right?” He looked her in the eye. “I’m a private citizen these days.”

“Okay, Captain,” she said, nodding fervently. “I mean, mister. The courier’s this way. Hey, Captain? I mean, mister?”

“Yes?” said Davenport, stifling a chuckle.

“Could…could you tell me about your friend Streph?” She looked at him hopefully.

Davenport thought of his friend’s pointy-toothed grin and smiled. “Definitely.”

_End._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I owe my life to all the volunteers at tazscripts, without whom this chapter would be just wretched to write (and possibly to read). They are all amazing. (And so are you--thank you for reading!)


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